Graveslab, Killeely More, Co. Galway
Co. Galway |
Tombs & Memorials
In the townland of Killeely More, in County Galway, lies a graveslab, a carved or inscribed stone laid flat over a burial, of the kind that once marked the resting places of clergy, local nobility, or minor landowners across medieval Ireland.
These slabs vary considerably: some bear simple incised crosses, others carry effigies, knotwork, or inscriptions in Latin or Irish. Their presence in a townland often hints at an associated church site or burial ground, sometimes long since vanished from the landscape above ground.
The specific details of this particular slab, its decoration, its dimensions, its date, and the circumstances of its discovery or survival, remain documented but not yet widely accessible. Killeely More is a small rural townland in Galway, and graveslabs in such locations frequently survive because they were incorporated into field boundaries, reused as lintels, or simply left undisturbed in what remained of a graveyard long after any church structure had disappeared. Without more detail in the record, it is difficult to say more about who may have commissioned it or when it was carved, though the existence of a formally recorded slab suggests it carries enough distinguishing features to mark it as archaeologically significant rather than a plain unmarked stone.