Ecclesiastical enclosure, Kilpatrick, Co. Westmeath

Co. Westmeath |

Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical enclosure, Kilpatrick, Co. Westmeath

On a gentle south-westward slope in County Westmeath, sloping down toward a small stream, a low earthen bank traces a rough rectangle around an old graveyard and the probable ghost of a church.

The bank is so worn on the eastern, southern, and western sides that it barely registers above the surrounding ground, more a scarp than a wall. Inside the enclosure, three slight humps rise from the grass, their purpose unconfirmed, though they may be the sod-covered remnants of an early church structure. The original entrance, wherever it once stood, has been entirely lost. On the 1913 Ordnance Survey 25-inch map, the site is simply marked as 'Kilpatrick graveyard (Disused)', a description that underplays considerably what is actually present beneath the surface.

The site is thought to represent the remains of an Early Christian ecclesiastical enclosure, a type of bounded sacred precinct commonly established by monastic communities in Ireland from roughly the sixth century onwards. These enclosures, often defined by a bank and ditch known as a fosse, marked the boundary between sacred ground and the secular world beyond. At Kilpatrick, the picture is made more complex by the presence of a second, larger enclosure nearby. Where the two meet, the bank forming the southern edge of the larger enclosure overlies the northern side of the smaller one, and a slight fosse running along that same bank falls within the interior of the smaller enclosure rather than outside it. This stratigraphic relationship suggests the larger enclosure was a later addition, implying the site was used and perhaps reorganised across more than one period. The whole arrangement remains visible as a subrectangular cropmark on aerial photography, its shape showing more clearly from above than it does on the ground. Kilpatrick House stands approximately 145 metres to the east.

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