Grave Yard, Glebe, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Burial Grounds
A graveyard that sits slightly higher than the land around it is rarely an accident.
At Glebe in County Wexford, the churchyard associated with the medieval parish church of Kilnenor occupies a raised, roughly D-shaped platform on a south-east-facing slope, its perimeter defined by an earthen bank and hedge running between two and four metres wide and standing about one and a half metres tall. This kind of raised enclosure is a familiar feature of early ecclesiastical sites in Ireland, where the act of defining and elevating sacred ground served both practical and symbolic purposes, separating the sanctified interior from the ordinary landscape beyond.
The church of Kilnenor sits within this enclosure, which measures approximately 53.5 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and 46.5 metres across. The irregular, D-shaped form of the boundary is a detail worth noticing: while later post-medieval graveyards tend toward rectangular plots, the curving or asymmetrical outline is often associated with much earlier foundation dates, suggesting that the ecclesiastical use of this ground may reach back well before the medieval period. About thirty metres to the south-west of the graveyard lies Kilnenor Well, a holy well, which is the kind of water source frequently found in close proximity to early Irish church sites, reflecting a long tradition of associating sanctified ground with natural springs.