Graveslab, Kilcoolyabbey, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Kilcoolyabbey, Co. Tipperary

A medieval graveslab is rarely modest about its intentions, but this one carries something extra: a maker's signature.

Set into the north wall of the chancel at Kilcooly Abbey in County Tipperary, within a shallow western recess, a limestone slab just over two metres tall bears a Latin inscription in raised black-letter script that ends, unusually, with the craftsman announcing himself. The final words translate as "Rory O'Tunny wrote this," a personal flourish rare enough on a medieval memorial to make this piece stand out from the hundreds of anonymous slabs scattered across Irish ecclesiastical sites.

The inscription, transcribed by historian Carrigan in 1903, records the deaths of John Cantwell, formerly lord of Moylassain, who died on 16th March 1532, and his wife Ellis Stoke. The slab's decoration is elaborate and carefully composed: a seven-armed floriated cross, its banding formed by two rectangular interlocked bands dropping vertically from a horizontal position beneath the knop, which is the rounded ornamental boss at the base of the cross head. The shaft itself rests on a curving Calvary mount, the traditional raised mound associated with the crucifixion. The Latin text runs in a marginal border, beginning on the lower right side, travelling along the top, and terminating about three-quarters of the way along the left side, with the margin continuing around the base. The slab has no chamfered edge, giving it a plain, unadorned profile that throws the surface carving into sharper relief.

The Cantwell family were Anglo-Norman lords with deep roots in Tipperary and Kilkenny, and their association with Kilcooly Abbey, a Cistercian foundation, placed this memorial within a house that already had a tradition of elaborate stonework. The name O'Tunny, meanwhile, appears elsewhere in connection with monumental carving in the region, suggesting a recognisable workshop or family tradition of stone inscription rather than a lone anonymous hand. That a craftsman of this period chose to leave his name on the work gives the slab a quality more personal than commemorative, a quiet claim of authorship across nearly five centuries.

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