Graveslab, Callan, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Callan, Co. Kilkenny

On the floor at the western end of the south aisle of St Mary's church in Callan, a limestone graveslab lies face-up, broken into four surviving pieces, with part of its Latin inscription lost for good.

The upper left border of the slab, which carried text in raised Black Letter script, is simply gone, making the full memorial message unrecoverable. What remains is still worth reading carefully, even from a few feet away.

The slab is a substantial piece of medieval stonework, roughly 1.86 metres long and 0.69 metres wide, carved in relief with a seven-armed segmented cross. The cross terminals are finished with fleur-de-lys forms, and below the cross-head sits a three-barred knop, a decorative knob or boss that separates the head from the shaft. The shaft itself is narrow, just seven centimetres wide, and descends to a stepped cross-base of the kind commonly found on high-quality medieval funerary slabs. The surviving portions of the Latin inscription run along the left-hand border. Black Letter, also called Gothic script, was the standard formal hand for monumental inscriptions in late medieval Ireland, and seeing it rendered here in raised rather than incised lettering suggests a craftsman working with some care. The slab is now in four pieces: two upper corner fragments, a central section showing the lower cross-head and upper shaft, and a longer lower portion. The lower right corner is also absent, so the slab is incomplete on both sides of what would once have been a coherent and legible whole.

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Pete F
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