What is recorded here

Half a metre of sandstone, no taller than a kitchen table, yet old enough to have watched monks build and abandon a monastery. It lay forgotten in the graveyard until someone carried it inside the church, where its ring and bosses still catch the light. St. Kieran the elder may have prayed beside it, or it may have marked a grave no one remembers. Either way, the cross survived the forgetting.

Monastery founded by St. Kieran the elder in the fifth century (ITA Survey 1943). Small freestanding ringed-cross of sandstone that was lying in the graveyard close to the base of the high cross (Gilling 1937, 294-5). Now housed inside the C of I church. Cross described by Harbison (1992, vol. 1, 167) as following: 'Near the door of the church there is a small sandstone cross with imperforate ring, and a tenon at the bottom of the shaft. It is 52cm high, 33 cm across the arms and 9 cm thick. Each face has one large boss at the centre, and smaller ones on the arms and shaft. On the shaft there is a hole on one side and a small sunken circle on the other'. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien. Date of upload: 23 May 2011

The high cross in Churchland was likely built by a monastic community associated with St. Kieran the Elder in the 5th or early 6th century. It is a small freestanding ringed cross of sandstone, reflecting early Christian Irish artistic traditions and possibly linked to the monastery's religious significance.

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