Graveyard, Kilbride, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Burial Grounds
A graveyard on the north-east edge of a low ridge above the Brittas river in County Wicklow holds rather more history than its present appearance suggests.
At ground level there is no visible trace of the Anglo-Norman parish church that is thought to have once stood here, yet the site quietly accumulates evidence of its own layered past. An earthen bank, roughly 2.5 metres wide and 1.8 metres high, survives on the eastern side, predating the eighteenth-century graveyard wall that most visitors would notice first. This earlier enclosure speaks to a settlement of some kind well before the wall was built, even if its precise origins remain uncertain.
The church believed to have occupied the site was Anglo-Norman in character, a form of ecclesiastical architecture introduced to Ireland following the twelfth-century Norman invasion, typically built in stone and serving a defined parish territory. Liam Price, writing in 1953, noted the probable connection. Local tradition adds another thread: a font, the stone basin used for baptismal water, is said to have originated here before being moved to St Brigid's Church, which stands roughly 200 metres to the west. Whether that removal happened at the church's abandonment or at some later point is not recorded. Inside the graveyard's western sector, an early graveslab survives in situ. A second carved stone, a cross-slab, has long since left the site; it was acquired by the National Museum of Ireland, where it is held under registration number 1970:189.
For those who visit, the most tangible physical feature is the earthen bank on the eastern boundary, which rewards a close look precisely because it predates the more obvious stonework nearby. The graveslab in the western sector is the other detail worth seeking out, a quiet remnant of early medieval commemorative carving still resting more or less where it was originally placed.