What is recorded here

Twenty cross-slabs lie hidden in the Cooly graveyard, ten bearing ringed crosses, waiting beneath grass that slopes toward Lough Foyle. One broken slab lies sideways near the church wall, its pointed shaft still visible, suggesting hands once cut it before forgetting where it belonged. St. Patrick may have walked this excellent land, yet the stones remember only pressure, chisel work and burial.

The early ecclesiastical site here consists of a sub-rectangular shaped graveyard inside of which are a number of earlier features. The monastery is located on excellent land sloping to Lough Foyle to the E and is traditionally claimed to have been founded by St. Patrick (Gwynn and Hadcock 1970, 399; Lacy et. al. 1983, 261). A magnetometer survey carried out by the Bernician Studies Group in 2014 in the fields surrounding the churches (DG021-008002-/003-) and graveyard (DG021-008001-) at Cooly revealed the outline of the ecclesiastical enclosure (DG021-008----) of the Early Christian monastery of Cooly (O'Brien and Adams 2014, 4). The graveyard was subject to a clean-up scheme in 2010 which resulted in the discovery of several unrecorded cross-slabs. The Bernician Studies Group carried out a survey inside the graveyard and recorded twenty cross slabs, 10 of which were ringed cross-inscribed slabs. One of these slabs consists of the lower half of a cross-slab decorated with an incised shaft with pointed terminal (O'Brien and Adams 2014, 5). This slab has been inserted sideways into the surface of the graveyard a short distance to the E of the upstanding section of S wall of medieval church ruins (DG021-008002-). The attached images (DG021-008020-_01.jpg) of the cross-slab kindly supplied by Bernician Studies Group who carried out a survey of Cooly graveyard in 2014. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of revised upload: 22 October 2015

Dateable to the early medieval period, the cross-slab likely served a Christian commemorative or liturgical function, possibly associated with the nearby ecclesiastical site. Such stones often carried religious symbols or inscriptions, reflecting the spread of Christianity in the region.

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