Stoup (present location), Patrickswell, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Religious Objects

Stoup (present location), Patrickswell, Co. Limerick

At the entrance to the modern cemetery beside St Patrick's Roman Catholic Church in Patrickswell, County Limerick, a stone pier holds within it at least two objects that have no obvious business being there together: a medieval holy water stoup built into its fabric, and a seventeenth-century sundial set into its top.

The sundial, moreover, originally came from Lisadell in County Sligo, making this modest gatepost something of an accidental curiosity cabinet.

A stoup is a small stone basin, typically fixed near the entrance of a church, used to hold holy water for the blessing of worshippers as they enter. This particular example is medieval in date and modest in scale, measuring roughly 34 centimetres wide and 26 centimetres tall, with a shallow bowl just 8 centimetres deep. It was originally located at Mainister-na-galliagh church, a separate ecclesiastical site in the area, before being removed and incorporated into the pier that now marks the western side of the passage from the church grounds into the cemetery to the south. The sundial pressed into the top of the same pier adds an additional layer of displacement; according to the parish priest of St Patrick's, communicated in November 2022, it dates to the seventeenth century and was brought from Lisadell, a place better known to most people as the Sligo estate associated with the Gore-Booth family. How it made its way to a gatepost in County Limerick is not recorded. Elsewhere in the grounds, just inside the eastern gateway, a second stoup sits repurposed as a flower planter. This one is post-medieval in date and was taken, again according to the parish priest, from an earlier eighteenth-century Catholic church that once stood nearby.

Visitors to Patrickswell who want to find these objects should head to St Patrick's R.C. Church and look carefully at the stonework around the cemetery entrance on the western side. The stoup is built into the pier rather than displayed on it, so it requires a moment's attention to spot. The planter near the eastern gateway is easier to notice, though its origins are unlikely to be signposted. There is nothing formally interpretive here; the parish priest appears to be the primary keeper of the provenance, and the information was shared in conversation rather than committed to any visible label.

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