What is recorded here

Graveslab in Gardens (kilkenny City By., St. Mary’s Par.) preserves a broken limestone cross with fleur-de-lis tips and possibly Lombardic letters, linking it to the abbey’s buried lives. The surviving fragment is small enough to hold in two hands, yet it carries a name reduced to Vill’s de something and a prayer hidden under soil. What is missing is not emptiness; it is the part other people already knew, the owner, the date, the chamber where the stone lay whole.

In St Francis' Abbey (KK019-026101-). Portion of a limestone graveslab (L 0.34m; Wth 0.56m; D 0.18m), though only portion of the top edge, which is straight, survives. It has incised decoration, consisting of a four-armed cross-head with a central double incised circle and fleur-de-lis terminals. Only a small portion of the central circle survives, along with the upper fleur-de-lis and the upper leaf of the sinister one. There are possibly faint traces of Lombardic script along the sinister edge. This may be one of the graveslab fragments described by Bradley (1980, 14, no. 44) as being one of ‘three fragments of an incised fleur-de-lis cross slab with an inscription in incised Lombardic letters: HIC JACET……VILL’S DE….. i.e. Here lies……..Vill’s de …….. Only two of the fragments fit together’. The portion containing the ‘VILL’S DE’ or ‘NL’S DE’ inscription is on fragment KK019-026523. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

Medieval Christian graveslab, 12th–13th century. Its incised four-armed cross indicates a ecclesiastical or monastic context, associated with the nearby St Francis' Abbey.

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