Graveslab, Coolaghmore, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Tombs & Memorials
In a rough-grazed field at Coolaghmore in County Kilkenny, a medieval graveslab lies partially embedded in the earth, its upper surface visible to a height of around 64 centimetres and a width of 60 centimetres.
What makes it quietly arresting is its restraint: the stone carries no inscription, no figural carving, only a shallow groove running parallel to the edge, forming a plain border across the top surface, set roughly two centimetres in from the chamfered rim. A chamfered edge, where the stone's corner is cut away at an angle, is a characteristic finish seen on a number of medieval Irish graveslabs, lending them a slightly refined profile despite their overall austerity. This one sits on a north-east-facing slope, among outcroppings of bedrock, within an irregularly shaped graveyard.
The graveyard surrounds a multiperiod church, the accumulated layers of which suggest a site that saw use across several distinct periods of history. The graveslab is not alone in the enclosure. Writing in 1905, the historian Carrigan recorded two uninscribed coffin-shaped slabs in the graveyard, each bearing raised crosses and dating to the 13th or 14th century. Those two slabs appear to be separate again from the pair identified during later fieldwork, meaning the site may contain as many as four medieval graveslabs in total, at various states of visibility and preservation. The clustering of so many plain, uninscribed markers in one modest enclosure points to a community that was burying its dead here across generations, without the means or the inclination for elaborate commemoration.