High crosses of Ireland

The high cross is a free-standing Christian cross of stone, usually outdoors, usually richly carved. The tradition belongs to early medieval Ireland and Britain alone: it probably grew from earlier wooden crosses, perhaps with metal fittings, and from pagan memorial stones, and it is still unclear whether the form was first raised in Ireland or in Northumbria, which Irish missionaries had converted.

The carving mixes scenes from scripture with panels of interlace and knotwork — the same vocabulary as the Book of Kells and the great metalwork, in stone. They were probably painted over a layer of plaster, which is why the crowded little scenes are so hard to read now: weather has taken the paint and softened the relief. The earlier crosses stood about two metres; the Irish ones grew to three times that while keeping their thick proportions, which gave the sculptors more surface to fill. The tallest, the Tall Cross at Monasterboice in Louth, stands seven metres.

The ring around the crossing, the Celtic cross of a million pendants, is the Irish form's signature, and the crosses below are where it came from. They stand where they were raised, mostly at the sites of the monasteries that made them.

Sources: Wikipedia — High cross ↗