Wall monument, St. Patricksrock, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

Religious Objects

Wall monument, St. Patricksrock, Co. Tipperary

Lying on its side against the north wall of a side chapel in the cathedral on the Rock of Cashel, a large medieval grave slab has spent centuries in a peculiar kind of architectural limbo.

Originally a freestanding monument, it has been incorporated into a modern chest tomb arrangement as a side panel, meaning that what was once meant to be read upright is now viewed edge-on, its face turned to the wall. Two cracks run across the stone, and the lower portion is missing, but enough survives to make it worth pausing over.

The slab, measuring just over two metres long and roughly seventy centimetres wide, carries a richly worked design centred on a seven-armed segmental cross carved in relief, each arm finishing in a fleur-de-lis. Cross-bands articulate the join between the cross-head and shaft, and the base of the shaft rises from an elaborate pillar form, with an interlocked pair of open rectangular shapes occupying the centre of the composition. Running along both edges and across the cross base is a Black Letter inscription, the formal gothic script widely used on commemorative stonework in late medieval Ireland. Fitzgerald transcribed it in 1903, and Maher rendered it into English in 1997: it records that here lie Patrick Connolly, a burgess of the town of Cashel, and Joanna Wale, his wife, who died on the tenth day of an unspecified month in 1506. The dates of Patrick's own death are lost where the stone is damaged, leaving him commemorated but only partially accounted for. A burgess was a recognised townsman with specific civic rights and standing, so the couple were people of some local consequence, prosperous enough to commission a slab of this quality for one of the most prominent ecclesiastical sites in Munster.

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