Inscribed slab, Toureen, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Religious Objects

Inscribed slab, Toureen, Co. Tipperary

Mortared into the east wall of a small Tipperary church, a fragment of stone barely eleven centimetres square carries an inscription that nobody can fully read.

The text, incised across most of its visible face, belongs to a slab whose original shape and purpose remain unknown; what survives is a piece of something larger, its edges broken away and its message incomplete.

The stone came to light during excavations at St Peakaun's church at Toureen in 1944, work recorded by Duignan in that year. Scholars Okasha and Forsyth, writing in 2001, catalogued it as Toureen Peacaun 22 and described it carefully: a fragment with a fragmentary text, which is perhaps the most honest summary one can offer. The slab is very thin, only about one millimetre visible in depth where it sits in the wall, suggesting it was always a relatively delicate object rather than a substantial monument. Whether it once marked a grave, formed part of a decorative panel, or served some other function within the early Christian site is not established. The church itself, dedicated to the local saint Peakaun, provides the broader context of an early ecclesiastical settlement, but the inscribed stone keeps its own counsel.

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