Graveslab, Dunboyke, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Dunboyke, Co. Wicklow

Just outside the south wall of Dunboyke church in County Wicklow, a small granite slab lies on a break in the ground where the slope falls away to the south-west.

It is easy to overlook: only thirty centimetres high, forty wide, and ten deep. But on its east-facing surface, carved in low relief, is a cross that stretches the full width of the stone. What makes it quietly unusual is what that cross seems to represent, not a complete cross in itself, but the terminal of a cross shaft, meaning this slab was likely once part of, or positioned to echo, a larger carved monument of which nothing else survives.

The slab sits near the point where the nave and chancel of the church would have met, a location that was rarely accidental in early ecclesiastical sites. In medieval Irish churches, that junction often carried particular significance, marking the threshold between the space used by the congregation and the more sacred area reserved for the clergy and altar. Whether the graveslab was placed here deliberately, or has simply come to rest at this spot over centuries of ground movement and disturbance, is not recorded. The carving itself is attributed and discussed by Corlett in a 2003 publication, where it is catalogued as Slab 4 among a group of carved stones associated with the site.

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Pete F
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