Cross-slab, Sevenchurches, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Crosses & Monuments

Cross-slab, Sevenchurches, Co. Wicklow

Among the many early medieval monuments scattered across the monastic city of Glendalough, sometimes referred to by its older designation Sevenchurches, one of the quieter survivals is a thin slab of mica schist positioned a few metres to the south-east of the Priest's House.

It is easy to walk past. The stone is modest in scale, just one metre tall, half a metre wide, and barely seven centimetres thick, and its decoration is worked in the shallowest of relief. What it carries, however, is a Latin cross whose arms and head expand slightly outward at their terminals, a form typical of early Christian stone carving in Ireland.

The cross itself projects only about five centimetres from the face of the stone. Mica schist, the material from which it was cut, is a metamorphic rock common in the Wicklow uplands, its surface prone to a faint silvery sheen depending on the light. The slab was recorded by Patrick Healy in an unpublished Office of Public Works survey from 1972, where it was catalogued as item 177 and located north of St Kevin's Church. The slight discrepancy between that earlier positioning note and a later observation made in 2005 suggests the stone may have been moved at some point, or that the reference landmarks were interpreted differently on separate visits. Such small uncertainties are themselves characteristic of early medieval monument surveys, where stones have been shifted, reused, or reset over the centuries.

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