Graveslab (present location), Dublin North City, Co. Dublin

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Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab (present location), Dublin North City, Co. Dublin

A carved granite slab, just over a metre tall and less than the width of a person's outstretched arms, sits today in the care of the Office of Public Works, having long since left the graveyard where it was first set into the earth.

What makes it quietly arresting is the precision of its decoration: a Latin ringed cross, the kind where a circle intersects the arms, rendered in low relief, and across its surface five small cup-marks, one at the tip of each arm and one at the central intersection. Beneath each arm sits a semi-spherical boss, a raised rounded knob worked into the stone, and the shaft on either side is flanked by herringbone carving, a zigzag pattern that gives the whole composition an unexpectedly textile quality.

The slab originally stood at Tully graveyard in County Dublin, where it was one of eleven early granite grave slabs recorded at the site, a notably concentrated group. Such early medieval grave slabs, typically marking Christian burials from roughly the seventh to twelfth centuries, were carved from locally available stone and often bear simple crosses, occasionally elaborated with the kind of incised ornament seen here. This particular example was documented by Ó hÉailidhe in 1973 and appears in Corlett's 2014 survey as Slab 1 from the site. By 1989, it had been taken into the care of the Office of Public Works, removed from Tully and brought to its present location for safekeeping, the graveyard context exchanged for institutional preservation.

Because the notes record only that the slab is now held by the Office of Public Works rather than specifying a publicly accessible display address, anyone hoping to see it in person would need to contact the OPW directly to establish where it is currently housed and whether it can be viewed. The eleven slabs at Tully graveyard itself, the site of origin, remain worth seeking out as a group, and the contrast between a slab studied in situ and one preserved elsewhere gives a particular edge to looking at either.

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