Enclosure, Macreddin, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Enclosures
At Macreddin in County Wicklow, a working graveyard sits inside the bones of something considerably older.
The modern burial ground occupies a quadrangular enclosure measuring roughly 75 metres by 60 metres, its boundaries still defined, at least in part, by an earth and stone bank up to 1.3 metres high and 2 metres wide. Along the northwest and northeast sides, that original bank has been replaced by conventional walls, but elsewhere the older structure survives, and there are faint traces of an external fosse, a defensive ditch, running alongside it. The enclosure faces a pronounced southwest-facing slope, which suggests its position was chosen deliberately, whether for drainage, aspect, or some now-obscure practical or ceremonial reason.
The relationship between early enclosures of this kind and later Christian burial grounds is a recurring pattern in the Irish landscape. Ecclesiastical communities frequently adopted pre-existing enclosed sites, and the boundaries that once defined a ringfort or an early monastic precinct could find themselves repurposed over centuries into something that looks, on the surface, entirely unremarkable. What makes Macreddin worth a second look is the survival of a circular granite font fixed to the graveyard wall, a fragment of liturgical furniture that points to a church on or near the site, even if no structure now remains above ground. Several eighteenth-century gravestones are also present, giving the site a readable, if partial, human record stretching back at least that far.