Graveslab, Town Parks, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Town Parks, Co. Tipperary

Three limestone slabs lie north of a church that no longer exists, marking graves beside a building that was itself replaced over two centuries ago.

The most easterly of the three, measuring just over two metres long and carved from limestone to a depth of twelve centimetres, carries decoration that rewards close attention: an eight-armed interlace cross with fleur-de-lys terminals, a style of ornamental stonework in which the arms of the cross end in the stylised three-petalled motif familiar from heraldry, and a barred knop, a raised rounded projection with a crossbar, rising from a calvary mount, the stepped base traditionally representing Golgotha. Around the edges of the slab runs a marginal inscription, the kind of commemorative text that would once have named the person buried beneath. It has worn almost entirely smooth. The only detail that survives is a date: 1582.

The church these slabs once accompanied was the medieval church of St Nicholas of Myra, which stood on the west side of the town, north of Main Street. According to O'Flanagan, writing in 1930, it survived in some form until around 1813, when it was demolished and replaced by a Church of Ireland building. The graveslabs, presumably left in place through that transition and the centuries since, predate the demolition by well over two hundred years. Whoever commissioned the carved slab in 1582 would have known a functioning medieval church, and the worn inscription suggests a person of enough standing to merit an elaborately decorated memorial, though that identity is now unrecoverable.

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