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Sites and Monuments Record · Ireland

Cross-slab

Gallen, County Offaly, Ireland

Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915) covering the location of Cross-slab, Gallen, County Offaly, with a pin at the register's coordinates
Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915), covering this location. Courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. The pin is ours, placed from the register's coordinates.

The record

Townland
Gallen
County
Offaly
Country
Ireland
Coordinates
53.26479, -7.82416
SMR number
OF014-029067-

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

4 historical maps cover this location, the earliest the 1790 map "Composite: Ireland." (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries).

Historical maps covering this location

  • 1790 · Composite: Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1811 · Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1869 · Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1891 · Ireland 16 (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)

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This record in the National Monuments Service's Historic Environment Viewer ↗

The National Monuments Service's description

West Wall, West Facing, North off centre.
Diagram A10
Inventory of Carved Stone ID 000038
Dimensions: Height .255m Width .26 m
Cross Slab fragment. Irregular outline. It bears a compass drawn double outline equal armed cross or petal design, the petal tips truncated. The arcs cross short of the centre leaving a small lozenge shape in the middle with a small central circular depression. The cross is enclosed in a tripe outline circle.
Description from Inventory of Carved Stone, National Monuments Service Archive.
Kendrick, JRSAI 69 (1939) p. 19 (A110), Fig. 11.

Possible 8th-century cross-slab with a four-lined cross-of-arcs, also forming a cross pattée design with central hollow, and small incised crosses in the four quadrants of the cross pattée, all of which is framed within a triple-lined circle (Lionard 1961, 111, Fig. 4). Gallen was the site of an Early Christian monastery (OF014-029008-) founded by St. Canoc in 492 AD. A large collection of early Christian cross-slabs (OF014-029003-) dating from the 8th/11th-centuries were uncovered along with the site of an early medieval church (OF014-029008-) during excavations at Gallen in 1934-5 (Kendrick 1939). This cross-of-arcs type cross-slab is one of nine cross-slabs to come from Gallen monastery (Lionard 1961, 112). A large selection of cross-slabs were inserted into a display wall on the site of the excavated medieval church.

To see a 3D model of this cross-slab, visit; https://skfb.ly/oxs6R

Revised by: Caimin O'Brien

Date of revised upload: 24 August 2022

References

Kendrick, T.D. 1939 Gallen priory: excavations 1934-5. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 69, 1-20.

Nearby in the register

Other entries of the same register within about three miles of this one, by straight line.

Sites and Monuments Record data: National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Record text is reproduced unchanged. National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland · CC BY 4.0
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