Graveslab, Moorstown, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Moorstown, Co. Tipperary

Two broken pieces of limestone lie just south of the crossing-tower wall at the ruined church of Mora in Moorstown, and they present a quiet puzzle.

The upper surfaces are entirely smooth, with no surviving inscription or carved decoration of any kind. Whatever name or symbol once marked this grave has been worn or worked away completely, leaving behind only the rough-cut undersides and the raw fact of the stone itself.

The fragments, which fit together closely enough to suggest they once formed a single slab, belong to a cluster of similar graveslabs found within and around the same church. A crossing-tower is the square tower built at the intersection of a cruciform church's nave and transepts, and Mora church retains the traces of such a structure. The grouping of slabs here, including this broken pair, is thought to date from the thirteenth or fourteenth century, a period when limestone grave markers of this broad, plain type were fairly common across Tipperary and the wider region. The similarity in form across several slabs at this one site suggests the church at Mora was an active place of burial over an extended period during the medieval era, serving a community whose individual identities have since been entirely erased from the stone.

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Pete F
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