Graveslab, Moorstown, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Moorstown, Co. Tipperary

Lying face-up in the grass about seven metres south of the nave wall of Mora church, a limestone graveslab has been slowly disappearing into the ground for centuries.

It is not standing upright, not mounted on a plinth, and not easy to read. Partially embedded and prostrate, the slab is roughly 1.62 metres long and tapers from around 52 centimetres at its widest to 40 centimetres, with its base broken clean away. What makes it worth crouching over is what remains on the surface: a very faded incised cross, its lines worn almost to nothing, with three circles still just visible and a narrow shaft no more than three or four centimetres wide. The design appears to be a four-armed trefoil-headed cross, a type in which each arm of the cross terminates in a rounded, three-lobed form.

That style of decoration places the slab broadly in the medieval period. A comparable graveslab inside the church interior has been dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, and the exterior slab seems to belong to the same tradition. There are at least three other graveslabs within or immediately beside the church that share the same general form, though none of them retain any legible inscription or decoration. The cumulative effect is of a graveyard that once held a coherent group of carved medieval markers, most of which have since lost whatever text or imagery they once carried. The Mora church site itself is the anchor for this small cluster, and the exterior slab sits in quiet relation to it, neither inside nor far removed.

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Pete F
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