Graveslab, Fethard, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Tombs & Memorials
Beneath the feet of anyone passing through the vestry of Holy Trinity Church of Ireland in Fethard lies a broken limestone graveslab, set into the floor in fragments, its upper right portion gone entirely and the remaining pieces no longer in their original arrangement.
It is easy to overlook, and that is part of what makes it worth attending to. The slab once marked the burial of a man named Redmond Nash, and what survives of its carved surface is detailed enough to suggest it was a commission of some care and expense.
The decoration is worked in relief, meaning the design stands slightly proud of the stone's surface rather than being incised into it. A three-armed cross with fleur-de-lis terminals, the lily-shaped ornaments common on medieval funerary stonework, dominates the face, though only one arm survives intact. The centre of the cross-head is encircled by a crown of thorns, and a three-barred knop, a rounded decorative protrusion, sits beneath the angled band near the base of the shaft. One surviving fragment carries a moon motif. Running around the border is an inscription in Latin, rendered in Black Letter script, the angular Gothic lettering typical of late medieval and early modern formal documents. Transcribed and translated by Long in a publication of 1907 to 1909, it reads: "Here lies Redmond Nash who died 6th December A.D. 1629; his son Edmond and his wife Elenor Everard caused me to be made." The slab, then, was not ordered by Redmond himself but commissioned posthumously by his son and daughter-in-law, a common enough practice but one that gives the object a particular human quality. Someone chose to have this made, and paid for it, and arranged for the inscription to say so.
The vestry occupies the south-east angle of what was formerly the nave of the medieval parish church of St John the Baptist, a building that was later absorbed into and adapted by Holy Trinity. The slab remains where the building's history placed it, underfoot in a room that was once part of a much older structure.