Graveslab, Newtown, Co. Kilkenny

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Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Newtown, Co. Kilkenny

A graveslab that spent centuries face-down or buried in the ground, only to surface during a graveyard clean-up in the mid-1980s, is a particular kind of accidental survival.

This one, now lying inside the medieval church of Newtown Earley in County Kilkenny, is a fragment rather than a complete stone; what remains measures just over a metre in length, tapering from half a metre across at its mid-point to roughly 39 centimetres at the base. What makes it worth attention is the quality of the carving that still survives on it, even in its incomplete state.

The slab carries a cross rendered in false relief, a technique in which the background is cut away so that the design appears to rise from the surface without being fully three-dimensional. Only the lower portion of that cross remains, but it is a considered piece of work. The shaft ends in a fleur-de-lys, the stylised three-petalled motif familiar from heraldry, with a knop, a small rounded protrusion, positioned immediately above it. The top edge of the surviving fragment is chamfered, cut at an angle rather than left square, which suggests the original slab was finished with some care throughout. On stylistic grounds the stone is dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, placing it within the medieval period when the church at Newtown Earley was active. It was documented by R. Harte in a 1987 article on the tombstones of Newtown Earley, published in the Old Kilkenny Review, which remains the main source for understanding the stone in its local context.

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Pete F
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