Graveslab, Dunboyke, Co. Wicklow

Co. Wicklow |

Tombs & Memorials

Graveslab, Dunboyke, Co. Wicklow

Within the roofless nave of a ruined church at Dunboyke in County Wicklow, a small granite slab sits quietly on a south-west-facing slope, distinguished from the surrounding ground by a cross carved in relief across nearly the full width and length of its western face.

The slab is modest in scale, measuring roughly 38 centimetres high, 23 centimetres wide, and 13 centimetres thick, yet the cross itself, raised just 8 millimetres proud of the surface, gives it an unmistakable intentionality. It is the kind of object easy to step over without registering, which is perhaps part of what makes it worth pausing at.

The slab lies approximately 1.7 metres east of a second graveslab within the same church ruin, suggesting that Dunboyke once served a community that marked its dead with carved stone, even at this small, local scale. Graveslabs of this type, flat or slightly raised stones bearing incised or relief crosses placed over or near a burial, were common across early and medieval Irish ecclesiastical sites, though individual examples vary considerably in ambition and execution. This one, recorded by Corlett in 2003, is catalogued as Slab 2 at the site, implying at least some systematic attention to what survives here. Granite, the material chosen, is durable but not especially easy to carve, which lends even a simple relief cross a certain quiet effort.

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Pete F
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