What is recorded here

That is the lower half of a dumb-bell cloister column from Jerpoint Abbey, dragged six and a half kilometres to Sheepstown and set as a grave marker before repair crews cemented it onto the church wall in 1951. Its two-bodied grotesque has wings, claws and tails that spiral inward like a locked embrace. A cloister monster became a boundary for the dead, then a ornament for a ruined wall, losing none of its strange urgency.

Currently fixed on top of the reduced N wall of the medieval church at Sheepstown (KK031-015001-), at the W end. A portion of cloister arcading from Jerpoint Abbey (KK028-062005-), which lies 6.5km to the NE, had been brought to the graveyard as a grave-marker (Manning 1975, 118-9; OPW correspondence and field notes). It is described by Manning (1975, 118) as, ‘the lower half of a dumb-bell sectioned cloister column with a carving in relief of the lower half of a two-bodied grotesque with wings and claws, and tails spiralling inwards towards each other’. The fragment was probably cemented into its present position during repair works carried out at the site in 1951 (ibid., 119). Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 15 February 2016

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