Ecclesiastical enclosure, Mooreshill, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Ecclesiastical Sites
At Mooreshill in County Wicklow, a small ruined church sits not at the centre of its surrounding enclosure but pushed to one corner of it, a quietly telling arrangement that speaks to how early Irish ecclesiastical sites were actually organised rather than how we might imagine them.
The church occupies the south-east corner of an oval enclosure, the kind of boundary, known in early Christian contexts as a termon or ecclesiastical enclosure, that would have demarcated sacred ground from the surrounding landscape. The oval or sub-circular shape is a characteristic marker of early medieval religious sites in Ireland, distinguishing them from the more regular geometries of later medieval foundations.
The church itself is a modest rectangular structure, roughly 16.7 metres east to west and 8 metres north to south, built from uncoursed rubble, meaning the stones are laid without the regular horizontal rows of more carefully dressed masonry. The walls survive to an average height of 1.2 metres and are themselves 1.2 metres thick, which gives the ruin a solid, enduring quality even in its reduced state. The single recorded opening is a doorway at the western end of the north wall; no window openings have been identified. The enclosure around it is defined on its southern side by an earthen bank with external drystone facing and an outer fosse, a shallow ditch running alongside it, while the eastern and north-eastern sides are marked by a slight scarp in the ground. The southern portion of the enclosure was used for burials during the eighteenth and early nineteenth century, a practice not uncommon at sites where the memory of sacred ground persisted long after any organised religious community had departed.