Cross, Aghowle, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Crosses & Monuments
In Aghowle graveyard in County Wicklow, a granite block sits partially buried in the earth, its top surface pierced by a neat rectangular socket.
That socket, straight-sided with a flat base, once held a cross shaft, and the cross that stood in it is long gone. What remains is a cross-base, one of three such bases recorded within the same graveyard, each of them now missing both shaft and head. The effect is quietly unsettling: the infrastructure of devotion preserved while the devotional object itself has vanished entirely.
The base in question, known as cross-base B, sits roughly twenty metres south of the centre of the church around which the graveyard is arranged. It is earthfast, meaning it is set directly into the ground rather than placed on a plinth or raised foundation, and the full depth of the stone beneath the soil is unclear. What can be measured is the upper surface: a rectangular granite block roughly 49 by 46 centimetres, with a socket measuring 30 by 11 centimetres and 12 centimetres deep. Granite is a durable material, which may explain why the base has survived while the shaft above it did not, though whether the cross was removed, broken, or simply weathered away over centuries is not recorded. The presence of three such bases at the one site suggests this was once a place where standing crosses held some particular significance, perhaps marking boundaries, stations for prayer, or focal points within the ecclesiastical landscape of early medieval Ireland.