Graveyard, Ballysize, Co. Wicklow

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Burial Grounds

Graveyard, Ballysize, Co. Wicklow

A small graveyard without a wall around it is more common in Ireland than one might expect, but the site at Ballysize in County Wicklow has a particular quality of quiet ambiguity.

Set on a level oval platform at the north-western edge of a slope that drops away toward a stream, it measures roughly 26 metres on its longest axis and 14 metres across. There is no enclosing feature, no boundary ditch or bank to mark where the sacred ground begins and the surrounding land ends. It simply exists, open on all sides.

What structure there is lies toward the south-western portion of the site, where the poorly preserved foundations of a wall trace out a rectangular area of approximately 8.5 by 4 metres. Whether this was once a small church or a more modest roofed building of some kind, the foundations alone do not say with certainty. Nearby, a stone cross stands among scattered small slabs, which may be simple grave markers of the most unadorned kind, the sort used when cut stone was expensive and the identity of the dead was left to local memory rather than inscribed text. The site was noted by Hawkes in 1938, and it has been subject to a preservation order since 1940, which at least speaks to the seriousness with which it has been regarded, even in the absence of any grand visible monument.

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