Graveslab, Gowran, Co. Kilkenny
Co. Kilkenny |
Tombs & Memorials
On the floor along the north wall of a Church of Ireland church in Gowran lies a sandstone slab that has been there, in one form or another, for the better part of seven or eight centuries.
It is easy to overlook, the kind of object that blends into the worn stone floor of an old building, yet it carries on its surface a cross design of some elaboration: seven arms radiating outward, each tipped with a fleur-de-lis ornament, the whole composition enclosed within a circle. The cross-shaft ends in a pointed terminal with a small curving knop above it. The carving is incised rather than raised, and considerable wear has softened the lines over the years, leaving no visible inscription to identify whose grave it once marked.
The slab itself is a tapered piece of sandstone, 1.72 metres long, narrowing from roughly 48 centimetres at the head end to 38 centimetres at the foot, with a chamfered upper edge, meaning the top rim is cut at an angle rather than left square. On stylistic grounds it is placed in the 13th or 14th century, which connects it directly to the original medieval church of St Mary's that once occupied this ground. That earlier structure dated to the 13th century, and the present building, a 19th-century Church of Ireland church, was constructed over what had been St Mary's chancel, the eastern end of the church traditionally reserved for clergy and the altar. The graveslab therefore predates the building it currently sits inside, a quiet inversion of the usual relationship between a monument and its setting. The seven-armed cross form with fleur-de-lis terminals was a recognised decorative convention in medieval funerary carving across Ireland, typically associated with ecclesiastical or high-status burials, though without an inscription here there is no way to know whose memory it was made to preserve.