Provenance
Discovery: First noticed forming a step to the stile leading up to the rectory at Loughor (Castell Llychwr); the ogham letters were noted in 1857; first published in 1869 by Jones (1869, 261).
Findspot: Loughor, Glamorgan, Wales (National Grid Reference: SS 5753 9816)
Current repository: Wales Swansea Museum
Last recorded location(s): Swansea Museum.
Support
The Glamorgan-Gwent Archaeological Trust Historic Environment Record: 00206w
Object type: Reused Roman altar
Material: Sandstone
Dimensions: H 1.08 × W 0.52 × D 0.53 m
Inscription
Text field: The stone is inscribed with a weathered and incomplete ogham inscription on the right-hand edge of the stone, starting about two-thirds of the way to the top reading vertically upwards terminating just below the capital. There is no trace of the original roman-letter inscription on the altar (Redknap and Lewis 2007, 401-402).
Letters: The inscription was likely chiselled. The Welsh Corpus (Redknap and Lewis 2007, 402) notes that ‘a single vowel-notch is visible before the strokes for V (or L), but need not represent an A; the final vowel-notch is on the chamfered underside of the capital’.
Date: Fifth or, more probably, sixth century A.D. (textual context)
Edition
Transcription: 1 [---]L[.] ṾICA
Translation
No definitive translation exists but the inscription is believed to represent an Irish name possibly Gravica
Commentary
The inscription ‘is probably an Irish name rather than a Roman one like Publica or Pervica, although Latin names certainly do occur in ogam script…Macalister (1945, 382) read GRAVICA…the reading LICA goes back to Rhys (1895, 182-183), who equated LICA with OI lecc, W. llech “flag-stone”. There are examples of LEC “stone” in later Irish inscriptions: CIIC:II, nos 796 and 857-9. A non-Roman masculine cognomen Licca is well-attested on the continent…the inscription presumably records a personal name, and indicates the reuse of the stone as a memorial in the fifth or, more probably, sixth century’ (Redknap and Lewis 2007, 402).
References
- Redknap and Lewis 2007, 401-402
- Jones 1869 July, 261
- Macalister 1945, 381-382
- Rhys 1895, 182-183