Inscribed slab, Toureen, Co. Tipperary
Co. Tipperary |
Religious Objects
Set into the east wall of a church in Toureen, County Tipperary, is a fragment of stone that is easy to overlook entirely.
It measures only around seventeen centimetres high and forty-five centimetres wide, and it is not even a complete object; it is part of a slab whose original shape is unknown. What survives on its visible face is the lower half of an incised equal-armed cross, the kind carved with a single continuous line rather than relief sculpture, with short bar expansions at its left and right terminals. Below the cross runs a line of incised text on a single horizontal line. What that text says, and to whom it might have referred, remains a matter for specialists.
The slab was uncovered in 1944 during an excavation documented by Duignan and subsequently noted by Macalister in 1949. It is catalogued as Toureen Peacaun 31 by Okasha and Forsyth, whose 2001 study of early medieval inscriptions in Britain and Ireland remains a key reference for stones of this type. The equal-armed cross form and the combination of cross with inscription are characteristic of early Christian memorial or dedicatory slabs found across Ireland, objects that were sometimes set over graves, sometimes built into church structures over the centuries as the sites were modified and rebuilt. In this case, the stone ended up incorporated into the church wall itself, preserved almost incidentally by being made part of the fabric of the building.