Graveslab, Inishcaltra, Co. Clare

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Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Inishcaltra, Co. Clare

On the island of Inishcaltra, in the middle of Lough Derg on the Shannon, a small limestone slab lies in a row of graveslabs in what is known as the Saint's graveyard.

What makes this particular slab quietly notable is its absence from the record: when the scholar R.A.S. Macalister surveyed and mapped the graveyard in 1916 and 1917, producing a detailed plan of its graveslabs, this one was not included. It carries no inscription, no carved decoration, nothing to identify who lies beneath it or when it was placed there.

The slab itself is a tapered piece of limestone, 1.28 metres long, widening from 0.22 metres at its eastern end to 0.42 metres at its western end. It sits in the western half of the graveyard, positioned 14.9 metres from the western wall, in a row between two slabs that Macalister did catalogue and number. The Saint's graveyard on Inishcaltra is associated with an early medieval monastic settlement on the island, a site with a long history of ecclesiastical use. That Macalister, who undertook systematic work on the graveslabs here in the early twentieth century, apparently overlooked or excluded this particular stone adds a layer of quiet uncertainty. Whether it was already partially obscured, considered too plain to warrant inclusion, or simply missed, cannot now be determined.

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