Ecclesiastical enclosure, Rathconnell, Co. Westmeath
Co. Westmeath |
Ecclesiastical Sites
The shape of a graveyard wall can sometimes tell you more than anything buried within it.
At Rathconnell in County Westmeath, the boundary wall enclosing a medieval church ruin and its surrounding graveyard follows a notably curved, quadrantal form, the kind of rounded, roughly circular outline that scholars associate with Early Christian ecclesiastical enclosures. These enclosures, typically defined by a curving earthen bank or wall, were a characteristic feature of early Irish monastic and church sites, and their distinctive geometry has a habit of surviving long after the buildings they once protected have crumbled or been rebuilt.
The medieval church ruins at the centre of the site suggest continuous religious use of the ground over a long period, and the graveyard itself contains memorials of post-medieval date, meaning the site remained in active use well into more recent centuries. The rounded perimeter, however, points to origins considerably older than the standing medieval fabric. The archaeologist Leo Swan, writing in 1988, identified the quadrantal form of the boundary wall as possible evidence of an Early Christian enclosure beneath or behind the later arrangement, suggesting that the site's ecclesiastical history may reach back to the early medieval period, perhaps to the first centuries of Christianity in Ireland.