Altar, Garranenagappul, Co. Cork
Co. Cork |
Religious Objects
Built into the stone wall behind St. Abina's Catholic church in Garrane is a slab that announces itself with unusual directness: carved into its face are the words "Altar Stone", separated by an inscribed Greek cross with straight, unadorned terminals.
The slab itself is modest in size, roughly 0.9 metres by 0.6 metres, and D-shaped, which already sets it apart from the rectangular dressed stones typically used in wall construction. It is the kind of object that rewards a second glance, not because it is spectacular, but because it raises quiet questions about where it came from and what it once served.
A Greek cross, where all four arms are of equal length, is one of the oldest symbols in Christian use, predating the more familiar Latin cross form by centuries. Its appearance here, cut cleanly between two plain words with no decorative elaboration, suggests a functional rather than ornamental intention. The stone may well have served as an actual altar surface at some earlier point, perhaps at an outdoor or provisional place of worship before the present church was built. The church behind which it sits dates to 1877, as recorded in a plaster medallion above the entrance porch in the north-east wall, and is a straightforward rectangular gable-ended building with a bellcote on the north-west gable. That a potentially older inscribed stone was incorporated into the boundary wall rather than discarded when the church was constructed says something about the local regard for it, even if the precise history of the slab has not been documented.