Mausoleum, Kilbride, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Tombs & Memorials
At the centre of a graveyard in Kilbride, County Wicklow, two mausolea stand in close proximity, each taking a markedly different architectural approach to the business of commemorating the dead.
The more prominent of the two presents a colonnaded façade on its northern face, its rear end built directly into a low hillside, giving it an almost theatrical quality, as though it were a small temple half-emerged from the earth. Its inscription, now only partially legible, records a dedication to the memory of Frances Parnell, placing it within the orbit of one of the most prominent Anglo-Irish families in the county.
The second structure, positioned to the north-east, is the earlier of the two in terms of its recorded date. An inscription on the monument states it was erected in 1785 by Ralph, Viscount of Wicklow. Where the Parnell mausoleum reaches for classical formality through its colonnade, this one takes a different visual path: a low, rectangular base supporting a pyramid. The pyramid form, popular in eighteenth-century funerary architecture across Europe, carried associations with antiquity and permanence, and its appearance here in rural Wicklow reflects the ambitions of local aristocratic patronage during that period. The two monuments, side by side in the same graveyard, offer a quietly instructive contrast in how the same era's élite approached the question of how to be remembered.