Graveslab, Fiddown, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Tombs & Memorials
Beneath the floor of a church in Fiddown, County Kilkenny, lies a stone slab that quietly preserves two names from the early seventeenth century, carved in Latin and Roman capitals at a time when such inscriptions were already beginning to feel like a deliberate choice rather than a default.
Floor slabs of this kind were a mark of social standing; to be commemorated underfoot in a place of regular worship was to remain, in some sense, a presence in the community long after death.
The slab dates to around 1630 and commemorates Edmund Daton, described as a gentleman of Cloincunny, and Joanna Den, identified as the daughter of one Fulke Den. The pairing of two individuals on a single tomb suggests a family connection, most likely husband and wife, though the inscription does not spell this out directly. The Daton name points to one of the established landed families of the region, and the designation "gent." was not merely courtesy; it placed Edmund Daton within a specific social tier, above the ordinary freeholder but below the titled nobility. The Den family, through Joanna and her father Fulke, adds a second strand of local gentry to the memorial. Latin inscriptions in Roman capitals on grave slabs of this period were not unusual among Catholic or formerly Catholic families in Kilkenny, a county with a particularly dense concentration of medieval and early modern funerary monuments.