Graveslab, Kinvarra, Co. Galway

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Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Kinvarra, Co. Galway

Inside the roofless shell of St Coman's medieval church in Kinvarra, three stone graveslabs lie in company, each carved with the same distinctive motif: a ring-headed cross on a long stem rising from a stepped base.

That consistency of design, repeated across all three rectangular slabs, suggests they were produced within the same tradition, possibly by the same hand, and may date to the sixteenth century. What gives the group an added layer of interest is that one of the three was later reused, its surface pressed back into service and stamped with the date 1818, somewhere between two and three centuries after it was first cut. The slab recorded here is the third of the trio.

Ring-headed crosses of this kind, where a circle intersects the upper stem of the cross, appear widely across medieval Irish funerary carving and connect these Kinvarra slabs to a broader tradition of commemorative stonework that flourished in Connacht during the late medieval period. The stepped base, a feature that gives the cross a visual weight and groundedness, was likewise a common convention of the era. That one slab was appropriated in the early nineteenth century rather than a new stone commissioned speaks to a practical attitude towards existing material, and perhaps to the durability of the original workmanship. Carey's survey, conducted in 2008, catalogued all three slabs and placed this one at position 40 on the church's ground plan, situating it precisely within the interior of a building that was itself already centuries old by the time the 1818 date was cut.

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