Graveslab, Fethard, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Fethard, Co. Tipperary

Against the outer north wall of the north transept of Fethard's Augustinian abbey, a row of graveslabs leans in varying states of legibility.

The most easterly of these is easily overlooked, its top corners chipped and its inscription worn close to silence, yet what remains carved into its surface is quietly remarkable. A seven-armed segmental cross fills the face of the slab, each arm finishing in a fleur-de-lis, with cross-bands marking the junction of head and shaft and a stylised pillar-base anchoring the foot. The carving is cut in relief, meaning it projects outward from the stone rather than being incised into it, giving it a sculptural quality that survives even where the surrounding inscription has faded almost entirely.

The lettering is rendered in Black Letter, the angular medieval script common on formal monuments of the period, running along the left and right sides and across the top of the slab. Most of it is now illegible, but one phrase on the right side can still be partially read: the Latin words for Margaret who caused this tomb to be made. An early twentieth-century account by Knowles, writing in 1903, may shed more light on who she was. He recorded an inscription on what is possibly the same slab identifying the people commemorated as Thomas Dungan of Ballynecloy, gentleman, his wife Margaret Carney, and their son William Dungan, also of Ballynecloy. According to his transcription, William caused the monument to be erected in memory of himself and his heirs male, and the date given is the 1st of April 1627. Knowles also noted that the family's armorial bearings had been carved on the stone but were, even then, almost obliterated. The slab measures 1.62 metres in length and 0.78 metres in width, substantial dimensions for a private memorial, and its relatively good overall condition means the decorative carving still rewards close attention even as the names it was made to preserve continue their slow retreat into the stone.

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