Tomb, Moig South, Co. Limerick

Co. Limerick |

Tombs & Memorials

Tomb, Moig South, Co. Limerick

Scattered across two separate rooms of what was once a religious complex in County Limerick are the surviving pieces of a single 16th-century table tomb, a type of raised chest tomb common in late medieval Ireland, split up and repositioned so that a visitor has to move between spaces to take in the whole.

The fragments have never been reunited, and no one is entirely certain whose tomb they once formed.

The surviving stonework was recorded in the 1985 Urban Archaeological Survey of County Limerick, compiled by John Bradley, Andrew Halpin and Heather A. King for the Office of Public Works. One limestone panel, now mounted at the east end of the north wall of the chancel, is carved in false relief, a technique in which figures are raised only slightly from the background plane, giving them a flattened, graphic quality, with the image of a bishop. Two further fragments were found in the chapter house and belong to the same tomb. One of these depicts St Catherine, identifiable by her traditional iconographic attributes, alongside another saint whose identity is not recorded. The second piece preserves the upper portion of two panels. The panels themselves are modest in size, measuring roughly 60 centimetres in height, and the stonework is limestone, the dominant building material of the region. The reference source for this entry, John Hunt's 1974 survey of Irish medieval figure sculpture, places the tomb in that wider tradition of ecclesiastical commemorative carving that flourished in Munster during the 1500s.

Access to the site and its condition on the ground are not detailed in the survey record, so visitors should expect some groundwork before travelling. The chapter house fragments in particular may not be on open display in any conventional sense. Anyone with a serious interest in late medieval Irish funerary carving would do well to contact the local heritage office in advance, and to bring a copy of the Hunt reference if possible, since the individual panels are easy to overlook without knowing what to look for. The carved figures, worn and fragmentary as they are, reward close attention.

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