Tomb - effigial (present location), Ballymore Eustace, Co. Kildare

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Tombs & Memorials

Tomb – effigial (present location), Ballymore Eustace, Co. Kildare

A carved limestone knight lies in a 19th-century church graveyard in Ballymore Eustace, County Kildare, which is not where he started. The effigy, dating to the 16th century, was moved there from Old Kilcullen, a site several miles away with its own considerable medieval history. It is the kind of object that tends to outlast the building it was made for, and this one has done exactly that.

The slab is carved in high relief and is believed to represent Sir Oliver FitzEustace. The figure lies in the posture conventional for medieval knightly effigies: head resting on a cushion, feet against an animal, right arm folded across the breast, left arm extended along a sword. The detail of the armour is specific. He wears a long hauberk, the coat of interlocked mail rings that was standard military dress for a medieval knight, with short sleeves and a mail collar. His helmet is a bascinet, a close-fitting type with a hinged visor, and on the forehead there is a crest that may depict a stag couchant, that is, a stag lying down. The scholar John Hunt, writing in 1974, was not especially impressed, describing the carving as representing "indifferent journeyman's work", and noting that it was reportedly "restored" at some point in the 19th century, a process that in that era could mean anything from light cleaning to fairly liberal recarving. Whatever intervention took place, it adds another layer of uncertainty to an object already removed from its original context.

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