Graveslab, Emly, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Emly, Co. Tipperary

Tucked into the boundary wall of a Roman Catholic churchyard in Emly, a small fragment of carved limestone has been quietly holding its ground for the better part of seven centuries.

It is easy to miss, built flush into the northern wall near the eastern end of the church, but a closer look reveals careful incised work: a trefoil pattern traced with double lines, the kind of ornament that once decorated the foot of a medieval graveslab.

The fragment, measuring roughly 30 centimetres by 27 centimetres and just 7 centimetres thick, is all that survives of what would have been a floriated graveslab, a type of funerary monument common in Ireland during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Floriated slabs typically featured carved foliage or plant forms growing from a central stem, often a cross, and were used to mark the graves of clergy or people of some local standing. The double-incised trefoil here represents the decorative base of just such a composition. Set into the same wall, close beside it, is a carved bishop's head, also reused from an earlier context, which suggests Emly's long ecclesiastical history. The town was once the seat of an important early Irish diocese, and fragments like these are the physical residue of a medieval religious community that once operated on a considerably grander scale than anything visible today.

The slab base sits in the northern boundary wall of the churchyard, near the eastern end of the building. Visitors who take the time to examine the wall carefully, rather than passing straight through, are likely to find both pieces without much difficulty.

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Pete F
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