At Clonshire More in County Limerick, two ancient cross shafts are recorded, protected under Irish national monument law, and yet no one visiting the graveyard today is likely to see them. They are, in a very precise sense, officially present and physically absent.

The site centres on a ruined parish church known locally as Templenacille, standing in the southern quadrant of a rectangular graveyard enclosed by a stone wall built after 1700, with an entrance gate set into the southern side. When the topographer Samuel Lewis was gathering material for his monumental Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, published in 1837, he recorded that the graveyard contained the shafts of two very ancient crosses. Cross shafts of this kind are typically the surviving lower sections of early medieval high crosses, the elaborately carved free-standing stone monuments associated with Irish monastic sites from roughly the seventh century onwards. By 1989, however, a survey by Bradley and colleagues found no trace of them. Whether they were removed, buried, built into the wall, or simply lost to the slow entropy of an active burial ground is not recorded. A preservation order, number 2/2010, issued under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014, remains attached to the monument nonetheless.

The graveyard at Clonshire More is not a formal visitor attraction, and the absence of the crosses themselves means there is little to orient around once you arrive. The church ruin, Templenacille, and the enclosing wall are the visible elements remaining. Anyone with an interest in early ecclesiastical sites in Limerick may find the place worth a quiet look, particularly for the layered quality of a post-medieval wall enclosing a space that clearly has much older roots. The southern entrance gate is the practical point of access. It is worth approaching the site with the understanding that its most significant recorded features are precisely what you will not see, which gives the visit a somewhat archaeological cast even before you set foot inside.