Graveslab, Athenry, Co. Galway

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Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Athenry, Co. Galway

Tucked into the south-east corner of the sacristy of Athenry's Dominican church, a broken fragment of carved stone sits quietly removed from public view.

It is a graveslab, or rather what remains of one, and its current resting place inside a working ecclesiastical building is a fairly typical fate for medieval stonework that has outlasted its original context. What it once marked, and for whom, is no longer legible.

The surviving piece is a tapering fragment, broken at both ends, measuring roughly 0.6 metres in height and tapering from 0.49 metres wide at the top to 0.46 metres at the base, with a thickness of about 0.09 metres. Into its surface, a craftsman at some point incised the shaft of a cross. Graveslabs of this type, flat stones laid horizontally over a burial and decorated with a cross or other motifs, were common across medieval Ireland, particularly in the vicinity of ecclesiastical foundations. The Dominican church at Athenry, one of the better-preserved medieval friaries in Connacht, is itself a significant structure, and smaller finds like this tend to accumulate in its care over time. The slab's tapering form is characteristic of the tradition, even if so much of it has been lost to breakage that little more can be said about its date or the status of whoever it once commemorated.

The sacristy is not a space visitors would ordinarily wander into unannounced, so the slab is not something one simply stumbles upon. Those with a particular interest in medieval stonework and a willingness to enquire locally may have the best chance of seeing it directly.

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Pete F
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