Graveslab, Inishcaltra, Co. Clare

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Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Inishcaltra, Co. Clare

On the holy island of Inis Cealtra, in the middle of Lough Derg on the Shannon, there lies a graveslab that managed to make it onto a scholarly map without ever being given a name.

In R. A. S. Macalister's detailed plan of the island's Saint's graveyard, drawn up during his survey of 1916 to 1917, the slab is rendered faithfully in plate XV but assigned no number, placing it in an odd liminal position: recorded but uncatalogued, present but not quite accounted for.

The slab itself is recumbent, meaning it lies flat over the burial rather than standing upright as a marker, and measures 1.34 metres in length by 0.5 metres across. It carries no inscription, no cross, no knotwork. The single feature worth noting is an oval inclusion of quartz near the bottom of the stone, a natural geological occurrence rather than a deliberate carving, though quartz does appear with some frequency in early medieval Irish burial contexts, sometimes placed near the dead with apparent intention. Whether that association holds here is impossible to say. The slab sits in the north-eastern corner of the graveyard, 7.25 metres from the northern wall and 2.2 metres from the eastern, coordinates precise enough to locate it but doing little to explain why it was left unnumbered when its neighbours were not.

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