Graveslab, Bahana, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Bahana, Co. Wicklow

Inside the ruined early medieval church at Bahana in County Wicklow, known in older records as Kilcommon, a stone slab lies with a full-length ringed openwork cross carved across its upper face.

The slab is sub-rectangular, roughly one and a half metres long and between half a metre and just over half a metre wide, with dressed sides and bevelled edges. It is the kind of object that rewards a close look: the care taken with the dressing and bevelling suggests a craftsman working to a deliberate standard, and the ringed cross, a form in which the arms of the cross are connected by a circle, was a characteristic motif of early Irish ecclesiastical stonework.

A companion piece once shared this site. A second slab, recorded by Braybrook in the late nineteenth century, carried a ringed interlace cross and an Old Irish inscription reading OROIT DO FACHTAIN, meaning something close to "a prayer for Fachtna". This formula, common on early medieval grave markers across Ireland, was an appeal to those who passed by to pray for the soul of the named individual. That slab has since been removed to the National Museum of Ireland, leaving Bahana with one slab in situ and the memory of another. Fachtna, whoever he was, now has his memorial in Dublin rather than in the Wicklow ground where it was first laid.

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