Bringing in our monuments

Madam, – Philip Tilling (April 2nd) wrote about the effect that neglect and pollution have had on some of the oldest stone-carved…

Madam, – Philip Tilling (April 2nd) wrote about the effect that neglect and pollution have had on some of the oldest stone-carved monuments in his part of the country, particularly the “once marvellous 7th-century cross slab” at Fahan, Co Donegal.

The Fahan stone once had intricate interlaced ornamentation and – uniquely in Ireland – an inscription in Greek along its side. “Nothing is now visible”, he reports sadly. However, I’m happy to be able to report that all is not lost.

Thanks to the 3D laser scanning of the monument (funded by the Programme for Research in Third Level Institutions) carried out as part of the Irish Inscribed Stones project based at the National University of Ireland, Galway, there are excellent digital images both of the interlace decoration and the Greek doxology, “miraculously” recovered by the latest technology.

It is hoped that these, and the other digital images captured by the project, will eventually be available online for all to see. That said, Mr Tilling is perfectly correct in what he said about the disastrous effects of atmospheric pollution on all our outdoor stone monuments (Monasterboice included).

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It is indeed time that they were all brought indoors.

If readers want to see such a monument irretrievably ruined, they should seek out the once fine Romanesque doorway in Roscrea, now gnarled and blackened by exhaust-fumes beyond recovery, even by modern technology. – Yours, etc,

Prof DÁIBHÍ Ó CRÓINÍN, MRIA, FSA,

Department of History,

National University of Ireland,

Galway.