Graveslab, Callan, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Tombs & Memorials
On the floor of St Mary's church in Callan, Co. Kilkenny, a medieval graveslab lies face-up in the centre aisle of the nave, broken into three pieces and slowly disappearing under a crust of lichen.
It is the kind of object that visitors step around without quite registering what they are looking at, which is a pity, because what survives is a careful piece of medieval stonework with enough detail remaining to read the intention behind it, even if the person it once commemorated is now entirely anonymous.
The slab is limestone, roughly 85 centimetres long and 57 centimetres wide, and it tapers slightly, a common feature of medieval grave markers that echoes the shape of the body beneath. Its edges are chamfered, meaning they are cut at an angle rather than left square, a finishing detail that required deliberate skill and suggests this was not a modest or makeshift memorial. Carved into the surface in incised lines is a cross-shaft, and just above where the shaft ends there survives the lower portion of a knop, the rounded decorative element that would have connected the shaft to the cross-head. The cross-head itself is missing, lost either to breakage or to whatever event fractured the slab into its current three pieces. There is no inscription visible anywhere on the stone, so no name, date, or office has come down to us. The slab represents only the central portion of what was once a complete monument; whether the missing sections were lost inside the church or elsewhere is not recorded.