Graveslab, Tullaherin, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Tullaherin, Co. Kilkenny

Inside the ruined medieval church at Tullaherin, a stone slab lies at the western end of the nave, broken and weathered, its lower half entirely gone.

What survives is roughly eighty centimetres of a once-tapering graveslab, its sides chamfered to a neat angle, its upper surface badly spalled where centuries of exposure have flaked away the stone. It is the kind of object that rewards a close look: carved into the face is an incised three-armed cross with a shaft below, and at the tip of each arm a fleur-de-lys terminal, each one finished with a small rounded knop at its base. The fleur-de-lys, a stylised lily motif associated with high-status funerary carving in medieval Europe, suggests this was no ordinary burial marker.

The slab is one of four surviving graveslabs within the church at Tullaherin, a site with deep ecclesiastical roots in County Kilkenny. On stylistic grounds, this particular example is dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth century, placing it in the later medieval period when Hiberno-Norman influence was reshaping both the landscape and the material culture of Leinster. The three-armed cross form, sometimes called a tau cross or a variant thereof, and the decorative fleur-de-lys terminals were fashionable motifs in that era, appearing on slabs associated with clergy, gentry, and occasionally members of religious orders. The identity of whoever once lay beneath this stone is not recorded, and the missing lower portion, which might have carried an inscription or further ornament, is gone entirely.

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Pete F
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