Graveslab, Burgagery-Lands, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Burgagery-Lands, Co. Tipperary

Lying face-up on the ground near the north-west corner of the west porch of St. Mary's church in Burgagery-Lands, a limestone graveslab carries the kind of carved symbolism that rewards a closer look.

The slab, 1.71 metres long and 0.72 metres wide, has suffered considerable damage over the years; it has been cut or broken straight across the top and broken more roughly across the base, and the uppermost portion of its cross-head is now missing entirely. What remains, however, is carved with considerable intention.

The decoration is executed in false-relief, a technique in which the background is cut away to leave the design standing slightly proud of the surface, giving the imagery a quiet sculptural presence without deep carving. The centrepiece is a seven-armed interlace cross, its shaft resting on a curving calvary mount, the kind of stepped or rounded base traditionally associated with representations of Golgotha. Within a rectangular panel at the centre of that mount, a skull and crossbones has been depicted, a motif common in post-medieval funerary carving across Ireland and Europe, used to signal mortality and the passage of time rather than any sinister intent. A barred-knop, a small decorative terminal bar, anchors the base of the cross. Along the right-hand side of the shaft, just below where the cross-head would have met it, two initials have been cut into the stone: R M. Whether these identify the person commemorated, a craftsman, or a patron is not recorded, but they are the slab's most personal surviving detail, a name reduced to two letters and left to outlast everything else.

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Pete F
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