Navje Memorial Park, the redesigned remnant of what was once Ljubljana’s central Saint Christopher’s Cemetery, still features the tombstone of the former district governor Louis Baron MacNeven Crannagh O’Kelly Aughrim. The tombstone in the form of a giant stone slab with a cut-off cross at the top is built into the niche of the eastern fence of the memorial park. It displays the faded inscription “Ludovicus S. R. I. liber Baro Mac-Neven de Crannagh O’Kelly ab Aghrim. Natus Pragae 16/6 1795, Obiit Labaci 14/1 1873” under the slightly damaged coat of arms carved in stone. The inscriptions of the years are linked by an interesting symbol—a Saint Andrew’s Cross, out of which grow an Irish shamrock, an English rose, and a Scotch thistle, testifying to the deceased’s British descent. Adherents to the Catholic King James II, the members of originally the Irish noble family of MacNeven withdrew from England to the Austrian lands in the early eighteenth century. William MacNeven (1713/14–1787), who built his career in Vienna as a physician, was elevated in 1753 to the rank of nobility and in 1767 to the rank of baron. On his elevation to baronial status, the coat of arms underwent no change, even though the draft of the noble diploma clearly demonstrates that he intended to upgrade the baronial coat of arms with the motto Fide et constantia. Stricken through in the sketch of the coat of arms, the motto was evidently never granted. Interestingly, however, it is displayed winding around and below the coat of arms on the tombstone of his homonymous grandson in Ljubljana. The ribbon carved in the tombstone displays the inscription FORTITER ac FIDELITER, which was apparently added arbitrarily, because there is no evidence that the family obtained permission from the imperial office to use that motto.

Sources:
Miklavčič, France: Zanimiv irski spomenik na starem pokopališču sv. Krištofa v Ljubljani. In: Kronika slovenskih mest 4, 1937, p. 215.
Preinfalk, Miha: Plemiške rodbine na Slovenskem, 18. stoletje, Part 2: Od Del-Negrov do Škerpinov. Ljubljana: Viharnik, 2022, pp. 123–132.