Ecclesiastical enclosure, Killeek, Co. Dublin
Co. Dublin |
Ecclesiastical Sites
At first glance, the walled graveyard at Killeek in north County Dublin looks like any other quiet rural burial ground.
Look a little closer, though, and the ground itself begins to tell a different story. The graveyard sits noticeably raised above the surrounding land, its enclosing wall following a distinctly oval line, and what survives of an earthen bank running outside that wall suggests the whole site was once something considerably older and more deliberate than a simple parish cemetery.
The enclosure is considered a likely early ecclesiastical site, the kind of enclosed sacred precinct that characterised early Christian monasticism in Ireland from roughly the sixth century onwards. These enclosures, defined by a circular or oval earthen bank and ditch, marked out the boundary of a religious community's territory, separating sacred ground from the secular world beyond. At Killeek, the outer bank once measured approximately fifty metres in length, thirty-five metres in width, with the bank itself around five metres wide and standing to about one and a half metres in height. A ramp on the southern side marked the original entrance. The work of recording what remains was compiled by Geraldine Stout and updated by Christine Baker, with notes uploaded in January 2015.
Visitors approaching from the crossroads nearby will find the graveyard still in use, so the site is accessible, though its earlier character requires some imagination to reconstruct. The northern section of the bank may retain remnants faced into the graveyard wall, and careful inspection along that side is worthwhile. On the western side, however, a new entrance and landscaping associated with a private residence appear to have removed the bank entirely, so the survival is partial at best. The oval outline of the wall remains the clearest indicator of the site's antiquity, and standing back to appreciate the elevated ground level relative to the surrounding fields gives the best sense of what this enclosure once represented.