Graveslab, Great Island, Co. Wexford

Co. Wexford |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Great Island, Co. Wexford

In the graveyard of Kilmokea on Great Island, a fragment of medieval stonework has quietly been pressed back into service doing what it was probably always meant to do, marking a grave, yet its original identity has been almost entirely erased by time and reuse.

The piece is the lower portion of a tapering sandstone graveslab, the kind that would once have lain flat over a burial or been set upright as a memorial, with chamfered edges, meaning the stone's corners have been cut away at an angle to create a bevelled profile. It measures a visible 76 centimetres in height, narrowing from around 26 centimetres to 20 centimetres in width, and sits 12 centimetres thick. What makes it quietly anomalous is its blankness. Medieval grave-slabs of this type were typically carved with decorative motifs, a cross, interlace, or at the very least an inscription identifying the person commemorated. This one carries nothing. No design, no lettering, no trace of whoever it was made for.

Whether the slab was always undecorated, perhaps carved but never finished, or whether centuries of weathering and handling have worn away whatever once appeared on its surface, is impossible to say now. What is clear is that at some point it was detached from its original context and reused within the Kilmokea graveyard as a straightforward grave-marker, a common enough fate for displaced medieval stonework in Irish churchyards, where older material was rarely discarded when it could still serve a practical purpose. The graveyard itself belongs to the broader Kilmokea ecclesiastical complex on Great Island, the large tidal island in the estuary of the Barrow, Nore, and Suir rivers in south County Wexford.

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Pete F
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