Graveslab, Callan, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Callan, Co. Kilkenny

Lying flat on the floor of the north aisle of St Mary's church in Callan, a medieval graveslab has been waiting, mostly unnoticed, for somewhere between six and eight centuries.

It marks no named individual; there is no inscription, no family crest, no legible clue as to who lies beneath. What it does carry is a seven-armed ringed cross carved in raised relief, its terminals fashioned into trefoils or a very simple form of fleur-de-lys, with a single barred-knop, a small decorative boss, sitting just beneath the cross-head. It is the kind of funerary stonework that once covered the graves of the relatively prosperous, people significant enough to merit a carved slab but perhaps not wealthy enough, or not inclined, to commission elaborate effigies or lettered epitaphs.

The slab itself measures 1.59 metres in length, tapering from half a metre wide at the top to 0.38 metres at the base, with a chamfered edge around the upper perimeter, a neat angled cut that gives the stone a slightly refined finish. Stylistically, scholars place it in the thirteenth or fourteenth century, a period when this kind of ringed cross decoration was common across Ireland and Britain. The stone has not survived entirely intact. It is broken horizontally into two pieces near the base of the cross-shaft, and several corners have been lost, most noticeably the upper left. The cross-head is heavily worn and spalled, meaning the surface has flaked and chipped away over time, so that the upper left quadrant in particular has lost much of its original definition. The dexter, or right-hand, edge bears additional damage along its middle section.

St Mary's is a substantial medieval parish church, and the graveslab sits within it in the quiet, slightly overlooked way that such objects tend to accumulate in old buildings. Visitors who look down rather than up while moving through the north aisle of the nave will find it there on the floor, its worn cross still legible enough to reward attention, even if the person it once commemorated remains entirely unknown.

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Pete F
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