Graveslab, Ballyneill, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Ballyneill, Co. Tipperary

Inside the ruined Kilmurry church in Ballyneill, laid against the north wall towards the east end, is a limestone graveslab that rewards close attention.

At just over two metres long, it is an elaborate piece of funerary carving: an interlace cross head with three fleur-de-lis terminals, the sun and moon placed in the upper corners, and a shaft supported by a calvary mount, the raised base type carved with a skull and crossbones that was common in Counter-Reformation memorial art across Ireland. On either side of the shaft sit two heraldic shields, one quartered and one divided into six sections, suggesting a family conscious of its lineage and eager to display it. Running around the margin in raised black-letter script, the kind of Gothic lettering associated with formal ecclesiastical stonework of the period, is an inscription that begins in the upper right corner and continues down the right side. The slab is cracked clean across about three-quarters of the way down its length.

The inscription commemorates a man named Philippus, recorded alongside his wife Margaret Shea, and gives the year 1630. A partially legible phrase, "quondam collactaneus," is Latin for "former foster-brother," a relationship that carried considerable social and legal weight in Gaelic Irish culture, where foster bonds between families were treated with nearly the same seriousness as blood ties. The phrase "Eomitisor Monae" likely refers to a connection with the Earl of Ormond, one of the most powerful Anglo-Norman dynasties in Munster and south Leinster, which would place this individual within the wider network of families attached to Butler patronage in Tipperary. Margaret Shea is noted as having died on the tenth of June, the year partially obscured. The two side panels of the slab are blank, which may indicate the carver left space that was never filled, or simply that the decorative programme was concentrated on the face alone.

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