What is recorded here

Dunlewy Cross-Slab stands half-swallowed by loose stones at the southern foot of Errigal, its shallow cross and double circles worn smooth by rain and time. The broken church walls beside it suggest worship continued long after the carver died, perhaps marking a grave nobody remembered or a boundary between the living and the mountain dead. The river still moves past the site, carrying silt and forgetting across the same ground where someone once cut meaning into stone.

A subcircular area defined by slight remains of an enclosing stone wall. At the mid W part of the enclosure are the remains of a stone building (DG042-002002-) only surviving .3m in height, 8m E-W and 5m N-S internally. There are breaks in the middle of the N and S walls. The SE quadrant of the enclosure is covered by a scatter of stones. In the NW area of the scatter is a cross-slab (DG042-002003-) .5m high standing on a low mound of stones. It is .24m wide and 0.08m thick. A cross is grooved on the W face. There are forks at the extremities of the arms and shaft and at the centre, a small depression surrounded by two concentric circles. To the S of the cross-slab are two standing stone slabs (DG042-002004-). Partly surrounding the cross-slab on the S is a semicircle of loose stones 3m in width and 0.3m in height. An earlier report of the site (UJA 1857, 253) records four circular buildings (DG042-002005-), each 14 feet in diameter, to the S and SE of the centre of the enclosure. The site is located on level ground beside the Devlin river at the S base of Errigal mountain in wet but fair pasture at the SE end of Dunlewy Lough. The above description was derived from the 'Archaeological Survey of County Donegal. A description of the field antiquities of the County from the Mesolithic Period to the 17th century.' Compiled by: Brian Lacey with Eamon Cody, Claire Cotter, Judy Cuppage, Noel Dunne, Vincent Hurley, Celie O'Rahilly, Paul Walsh and Seán Ó Nualláin (Lifford: Donegal County Council, 1983). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated. Date of upload: 22 September 2008

A medieval Christian burial slab, likely 8th to 10th century, associated with an early monastic or ecclesiastical site; its carved cross indicates the spread of Christianity in the region during the Early Medieval period.

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