What is recorded here

Donaghmore’s lost lion still bites the air in Kilkenny, its jaws clamped around a moulding that no longer exists. A twelfth-century carpenter or mason shaped the beast to hold an angle, not to decorate a wall, yet the angle vanished and the lion survived. It may have guarded a doorway where people passed into worship, or it may have marked the place where a building turned. Either way, the fragment remembers the shape of what it lost.

Originally from the Romanesque church at Donaghmore (TS077-027001-), Co. Tipperary. Currently in the OPW store, Kilkenny (Kilkenny depot stone carving number: KD004). A jamb with engaged column (overall dimensions of stone L 0.37m; Wth 0.32m; H 0.24m; diam. of column 0.16m) carved with a lion’s head in high relief. From the corpus of Romanesque carved sculpture in Britain and Ireland: A jamb stone carved with beakhead (this has since been removed to Kilkenny stone depot) which was evidently part of a straight moulding with an angle colonnette. The angle colonnette is overlaid with a lion mask, with the upper jaw and tongue clasping the moulding’ (https://www.crsbi.ac.uk/view-item?key=SXsiUCI6eyJ2YWx1ZSI6ImRvbmFnaG1vcmUiLCJvcGVyYXRvciI6MSwiZnV6enlQcmVmaXhMZW5ndGgiOjMsImZ1enp5TWluU2ltaWxhcml0eSI6MC44LCJtYXhTdWdnZXN0aW9ucyI6NSwiYWx3YXlzU3VnZ2VzdCI6bnVsbH0sIkYiOiJleUowSWpwYk5sMTkifQ&pg=2&WINID=1665843006842#FeatureSet:4.%20Loose%20Sculpture). Stylistically this dates to the 12th century. See attached: KK019-026369-_01 (photograph by Chris Corlett) Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 25 January 2023

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