County: Wicklow Site name: ST KEVIN'S CROSS, Seven Churches or Camaderry
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: Ann Lynch, Office of Public Works
Site type: Cross - High cross
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 711991m, N 697003m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.012003, -6.331081
Limited excavations were carried out in Glendalough in April at the base of St Kevin’s Cross to allow straightening and consolidation of the cross.
A rough paving of flagstones had been placed around the base of the cross in modern times and underlying this was a deposit of loose sandy soil with gravel inclusions which averaged 0.3m—0.4m in depth. Almost 30 fragments of clay pipe stems were recovered from this soil, the majority from just east of the cross.
The sandy soil lay directly on top of a large granite boulder which forms a baseplate for the cross. The upper surface of this boulder had been worked and smoothed to give a level rectangular surface 1.25m x 1.4m with a central socket for the cross-shaft. The cross-shaft had been wedged in position with mica-schist packing stones along the western and southern sides of the socket. When the packing stones were removed to straighten the cross, the socket was measured as being 0.27m deep.
Large granite and mica-shist stones had been loosely piled around the western, southern and eastern sides of the boulder. A few of these stones project above the upper (flat) surface of the boulder and partly sit on it. It appears that some time in the past the area around the base of the cross was dug out and then backfilled with these large stones, with loose soil put on top of the baseplate itself. A crude mica-schist cross (0.45m long) was recovered from amongst the loose stones on the western side of the cross.
