Graveslab, Coolaghmore, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Coolaghmore, Co. Kilkenny

Among the more quietly puzzling features of the graveyard at Coolaghmore is a graveslab so small that it measures only eight or nine inches across at its narrow end, roughly the width of a large book.

Coffin-shaped graveslabs of this kind, carved from stone and tapered at one end to echo the outline of the body within, were a recognisable form of medieval memorial across Ireland, typically laid flat over a burial. That one here should be so unusually slight invites questions that the stone itself cannot answer.

The graveyard sits within an irregularly shaped enclosure attached to a multiperiod church, meaning the ecclesiastical site evolved across several distinct phases of use, likely spanning the early medieval period through to later centuries. Writing in 1905, the historian Carrigan recorded two uninscribed coffin-shaped slabs with raised crosses in the graveyard, which he dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth century. These appear to be separate from two further graveslabs identified during later fieldwork, suggesting the site holds at least four such stones in total. None of the coffin-shaped slabs carry inscriptions, so there is no name, date, or office to help place them in any particular life or community. Their precise locations within the graveyard are no longer known with certainty, which gives the whole cluster of stones an oddly elusive quality: documented, counted, and yet not quite pinned down.

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