What is recorded here

Inchbofin island, Lough Ree: a small cross-slab, thirty-six centimetres wide and seven centimetres thick, with a single-line cross whose ends swell like dropped stitches. It surfaced during ground-clearance near the island church in 1913 and now sits in the OPW depot at Athenry, pulled from that wet place into dry keeping. The cross may have marked a grave, a shrine or a boundary; the stone no longer answers which. What remains is the shape of devotion, sharpened enough to cut through centuries.

This irregularly shaped slab (H 0.3m; Wth 0.36m; T 0.07m) bears an incised single-line cross with slightly enlarged terminals. It was found during ground-clearance works in the vicinity of the church (WM015-001----) on Inchbofin island on Lough Ree, Co. Westmeath (Commissioners of Public Works 1913, Appendix E, Slab F) and is currently kept in the OPW depot in Athenry. See WM015-001012- for its original location. (Crawford 1913, 329, 1. (f)) Compiled by: Olive Alcock Date of upload: 2 March 2023 Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland 1913 Eighty-first annual report of the Commissioners of Public Works in Ireland with appendices for the year ending 31st March 1913. London. HMSO.

This cross-slab is likely of early medieval Christian origin, dating to between the 8th and 12th centuries. Such crosses were often associated with ecclesiastical sites and may have served as markers, ritual objects, or memorials.

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