Graveslab, Tullaherin, Co. Kilkenny

Co. Kilkenny |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Tullaherin, Co. Kilkenny

In the chancel of the ruined medieval church at Tullaherin, a limestone graveslab lies face down on the floor, its decorated surface, if it ever had one, pressed silently into the earth.

What visitors see is only the rough, unworked back of the stone, a long tapering slab nearly two metres in length and considerably wider at the head than the foot, the standard form of a high-status medieval grave marker. Whatever inscription or carved imagery it may carry remains invisible, sealed beneath its own weight.

The slab is not alone in this. Immediately to its east lies a second graveslab, and elsewhere within the same church there are fragments of at least two further examples, dated broadly to the 13th or 14th century. That concentration of funerary stonework within a single chancel points to a site of some local significance during the later medieval period, when carved graveslabs of this kind, typically commissioned for clergy or landed families, were among the more deliberate acts of commemoration available. The church at Tullaherin is itself a structure of medieval origin, and the cluster of slabs suggests it served a community wealthy or connected enough to mark its dead in worked limestone rather than simple earthen burial.

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