Graveslab, Fethard, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Fethard, Co. Tipperary

A graveslab that spent centuries underground before being accidentally rediscovered tells a particular kind of story, one shaped as much by what has been worn away as by what survives.

This limestone slab, lying at the east end of the former chancel of the medieval parish church of St John the Baptist in Fethard, now the Holy Trinity Church of Ireland, was most likely buried beneath the chancel floor and came to light in 1861, when a vault was being constructed for a man named Wray Palliser. A neighbouring slab appears to have shared the same fate and the same moment of recovery.

The slab itself is a tapered rectangle of limestone, nearly two metres long and narrowing from 69 centimetres at the top to 57 at the base, a shape typical of medieval grave markers. Its decoration is carved in relief and centres on the IHS monogram, a common Christogram derived from the Greek rendering of the name of Jesus, with a cross rising from the bar of the H. Below that sits a heart flanked by the initials P. H. and surmounted by three nails, a reference to the Passion. The Latin inscription, cut in Roman capitals, reads EXVLTABO IN above the central motif and DEO IESV MEO around the heart, drawing from the psalms: "I will rejoice in God my Jesus." No date is legible on the stone. A transcription published by Long between 1907 and 1909 recorded that the inscription once continued with the phrase QUI FUIT SEPERIOR FIDERDIAE ET, suggesting the deceased held some position or title connected to a place called Fiderdiae, though what followed that fragment is now lost entirely, and the passage itself is no longer visible on the stone.

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