Stone Cross, Ballyfolan, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Crosses & Monuments
At the edge of a field in Ballyfolan, a granite cross stands just inside a roadside fence, modest in scale but quietly loaded with detail.
It measures roughly 1.2 metres in height, and its western face, the one that looks out onto the road, carries the inscription IHS, a Christogram derived from the Greek spelling of Jesus and long used in Catholic and earlier Christian devotional contexts. What makes this cross a little stranger than the average wayside marker is the way the carving has been arranged: a cross symbol sits above the letters, incorporated directly into the H of IHS, so the two forms bleed into one another rather than sitting as separate elements. Below the inscription, a small stone head projects from the surface, flanked on either side by two incised straight lines. The eastern face, turned away from the road and towards the field, appears to have no decoration at all.