What is recorded here

Half a ring, no shaft, and a small hollow where a figure or fixture may have sat: the cross head from Girley graveyard was built into a roadside wall, sketched in the 1920s, gone by the 1980s, then recovered and moved to the OPW depot at Trim. Its faces are crowded with interlace knots, but one edge is plain except for a moulding and two hollows, as if the cross was made to be seen, handled, changed or completed. The two smaller stones nearby match its size and decoration, suggesting a taller monument broken or dispersed rather than a single proud standing shape. What is missing is not emptiness; it is the part that told the story at a glance.

The head of a high cross was formerly built into the roadside wall in the NE corner of the graveyard at Girley (ME023-022----) but was removed between the 1960s (Harbison 1990-1, 134-8) and 1984 (Moore 1987, 136, No. 1408). A small sketch of this was published by Crawford (1926, 9-10). (Harbison 1992, 94) The cross head has been recovered (O’Reilly 2012) and is now kept in the OPW National Monuments depot at Trim (ME036). It is a ringed cross but the top of the ring and shaft are missing (H c. 0.44m; span c. 0.4m), and it only has interlace decoration on every face, except what might be called the back, which has a moulding at the edge and a hollow (diam. c. 5cm) at the centre with a smaller hollow at the end of one arm, both of which might be secondary. The panels on the other sides consists mostly of interlace knots (dims of shaft c. 0.21m x c. 0.16m). Two other stones described (ibid.) as ’13 inches high, 10.5 inches wide and 6.5 inches deep (H c. 0.33m; 0.27m x 0.16m) and 14 inches high, 8.25 inches wide and 6.5 inches deep (H c. 0.36m; 0.21m x 0.16m)’ with double mouldings and interlace knots in panels are probably from the same cross, although the latter stone is badly damaged with decoration only on one face. Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 22 May, 2015

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