Cross-slab, Friary, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Friary, Co. Galway

In a graveyard attached to a Franciscan friary in County Galway, a limestone slab leans slightly southward, its surface marked by a diagonal crack that records an old break, since repaired but never quite erased.

The stone is not especially large, roughly a metre and a quarter tall and just under seventy centimetres wide, but its face carries the kind of quiet detail that rewards a closer look than most visitors are likely to give it.

The eastern face of the slab bears an incised two-line Latin cross, a form in which the arms of the cross are defined by two parallel lines rather than a single stroke, a technique common in early and medieval Irish stonework. The arms extend all the way to the edges of the stone, giving the design an almost architectural quality, as though the slab itself is bounded by the cross rather than merely decorated with it. Above and below the cross, a single curved line has been cut into each panel, small gestures of ornament whose meaning is now unclear. More intriguing still is the lower right-hand panel, where traces of what may be additional decoration or lettering survive in a condition too worn to read with confidence. Whether those marks once formed part of an inscription, or belong to some other carved motif, remains an open question.

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Pete F
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