Graveslab, Killora, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Killora, Co. Galway

Inside the ruined church at Killora, Co. Galway, a broken graveslab lies loose on the ground, its carved surface offering a quietly unresolved puzzle.

Sections of the design are only lightly incised, one digit of the date is incomplete, and several triangular spaces within the geometric pattern were never filled. The most plausible explanation is not negligence but paint: the outlines were sufficient because colour would have done the rest. What survives, then, is essentially a preparatory drawing in stone, a glimpse of a medieval craft process that finished surfaces usually conceal.

The slab, which dates to 1619, is one of five recumbent graveslabs of the 16th and 17th centuries lying within the same church. Recumbent slabs of this kind were laid flat over a burial, typically carved to mark a specific individual or family. This example bears two lower panels, one with the date 1619 and one with the IHS monogram, a Christogram derived from the Greek spelling of Jesus, surmounted by the same date. Above these panels, the upper portion of the stone is covered in a false-relief latticework, a geometric arrangement built from the intersection of lozenge shapes, saltire crosses, and Greek crosses. Where these shapes meet, semi-circles mark the joins, with a central circle at each intersection and quadrant circles at the corners. A small cross with expanded terminals springs from the crossbar of the H in the IHS monogram. The slab as it now exists measures 0.91 metres long by 0.58 metres wide, but a second, undecorated fragment lying nearby appears to be the lower portion of the same stone. Together they suggest an original length of around 1.83 metres. The style of carving is consistent with comparable examples from the late 16th and earlier 17th century, as noted by Robert Chapple in his 1995 study of the site.

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