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| Piscina fragment in New Abbey Cemetery, Kilcullen, Co. Kildare. © Eugene Brennan |
Well sort of! I always wondered what this stone object was in New Abbey Cemetery. A slab with a seemingly conical depression and hole at the bottom. It's located near the small entrance gate to the cemetery. I originally thought it might have been part of a door jamb and decorative keeper for a bolt, but I came across a photo of a lavabo or more correctly a piscina on an archaeological website and it appears the stone piece in New Abbey may be the drain section of what remains of a piscina. A lavabo is an old term for a wash basin and in an ecclesiastical context the basin is used by clergy for ritually washing hands before the consecration. A piscina is a basin for washing communion vessels and the drain is known as a sacrarium. I queried it with Wexford archaeologist Colm Moriarty who runs the Irish Archaeology website and Twitter/X account of the same name. He confirmed my suspicion and agreed that it was more than likely part of a piscina. What seems like a conical depression actually appears to be an inverted pyramid, with an octagonal base and eight sloped faces