Headstone, Glebe, Co. Wicklow

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Religious Objects

Headstone, Glebe, Co. Wicklow

A small headstone in the glebe lands of Co. Wicklow carries an inscription that is more gap than text.

Cut into a rounded slab of slaty limestone, it reads simply: DAVID ... DECEAISED MAY THE FIRST 1696, the surname lost to time, the spelling of "deceased" rendered phonetically in a way that was not unusual for the period, when standardised orthography was still settling into common use. The stone is modest in every dimension, measuring roughly half a metre tall, just over forty centimetres wide, and barely six centimetres deep, yet it has survived more than three centuries in place.

The memorial was documented by Bradley and King in their 1989 Urban Survey, which noted its position on the right-hand side of the path close to the south entrance gate. The date, 1 May 1696, places it in the years following the Williamite Wars, a period of considerable upheaval across Ireland. The material, slaty limestone with an upright rounded form, is characteristic of vernacular funerary carving of the late seventeenth century, when local craftsmen worked with whatever stone was available rather than importing more fashionable materials. The first name David is legible; the surname has either worn away or was never fully cut into the surface.

The stone sits close to the south entrance gate, to the right of the path, which makes it relatively easy to locate for anyone visiting the site. What lingers is the incompleteness of it: a man named David, dead on the first of May 1696, his family name now as absent from the record as he is himself.

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Pete F
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