Graveslab, Ballymore Eustace, Co. Kildare

Co. Kildare |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Ballymore Eustace, Co. Kildare

In the south-east corner of a graveyard in Ballymore Eustace, a granite slab stands quietly upright, its surface carrying a Latin cross so worn by weather that it takes a moment to resolve against the stone. The slab is earthfast, meaning it is set directly into the ground rather than mounted on a base or plinth, and it tapers gently as it rises to just over a metre in height. The cross is incised on the east-facing side, which follows a long tradition of orienting Christian grave markers towards the rising sun.

The slab is recorded by Christiaan Corlett in a 2003 survey, where it appears as Slab 7 in a catalogue of similar monuments in the area. Granite is a hard, coarse-grained stone that weathers slowly but does erode over centuries, and the degree of wear on the incised cross here suggests considerable age, though pinning down an exact date without further analysis would be speculative. Its dimensions, roughly 1.1 metres tall, between 46 and 52 centimetres wide, and 20 centimetres thick, place it within a range typical of early medieval grave markers found across Ireland, where simple incised crosses served as the primary form of funerary inscription before more elaborate carved slabs became common.

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