What is recorded here

Graveslab in Gowran is a broken limestone slab lying on shelving inside the 17th-century mortuary chapel beside St Mary’s nave. Its seven-armed floriated cross still rises in relief, though the lower part is narrower and the border survives only on one side. Carrigan wrote that it once bore an Old English name and date, but that much has been lost or worn away. What remains is a tall ghost of a burial marker, displaced from the floor yet still pointing upward through stone.

Lying on shelving within the 17th-century mortuary chapel adjoining externally the S wall of the nave of the 13th-century church of St Mary’s (KK020-060006-) in Gowran. Two pieces, which fit together, of a broken straight-sided limestone graveslab (Tot. surviving H 1.02m; upper portion with cross-head H 0.67m; Wth 0.56m; lower portion with cross-shaft H 0.57m; Wth 0.4m)decorated in raised relief with a seven-armed floriated cross with a two bar-knop at the base of the cross-head. There was a raised border (Wth 0.09m) around the edge, but only a portion of this survives on the sinister side. The broken upper portion bears part of the cross-head and sinister margin and the lower portion the cross-shaft and sinister margin. This may be the slab described by Carrigan (1905, vol. 3, 405) as, ‘A very large floor-slab, or table of altar-tomb, now broken, with an eight-pointed cross down the centre, and dating from about the year 1600, has the following Old English inscription, in relief, down one of the sides: Hic jacet Richard Nase et Ellana Shortall exor ei q obiit [ ] die mensis [ ]. This is the entire of the original inscription. The tomb lies in the nave’. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 18 September 2019

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