Graveslab, Gardens, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Gardens, Co. Kilkenny

Set into the eastern entrance pier of St Mary's churchyard in Kilkenny, a medieval graveslab has spent centuries doing a job its carver never intended, serving as building material rather than a marker of the dead.

The upper two-thirds of the slab survive, measuring roughly 63 centimetres by 33 centimetres, and what remains is quietly compelling: a floriated ringed-cross, meaning a cross whose terminals end in leaf-like decorative flourishes, rising from a small orb above the cross-shaft. The top of the cross-head has been cut back or otherwise modified, and the right side is truncated where the stone was shaped to fit its new role in the pier.

The slab dates to the 13th or 14th century and is carved from fossiliferous limestone, a stone type common in the Kilkenny area that often reveals the outlines of ancient marine creatures when you look closely at its surface. It carries no inscription, which was not unusual for graveslabs of this period; the cross design alone would have been understood as a sufficient mark of Christian burial. At some point, the slab was removed from its original funerary context and incorporated into the churchyard wall, a practice that was far from uncommon as older stones were pressed into service during repairs or rebuilding. The reuse means the stone has survived, even if the identity of whoever it once commemorated is entirely lost.

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