Graveyard, Kilmagig, Co. Wicklow

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Burial Grounds

Graveyard, Kilmagig, Co. Wicklow

In the middle of a working wheat field, on the crest of a gently domed ridge in County Wicklow, sits an old graveyard that the surrounding farmland has quietly swallowed.

There is no village around it, no road leading directly to it; just the enclosure itself, rising out of the crop, with the remnant of a small church at its northern end so consumed by vegetation that the walls are almost invisible beneath the growth. What survives of those walls stands to roughly a metre in height, built in coarse, apparently unmortared stone, which means no lime or mortar was used to bind the courses together, relying instead on the weight and fit of the stones alone.

The church itself is modest even by the standards of early Irish ecclesiastical buildings. Ordnance Survey letters compiled by John O'Flanagan in 1928, drawing on fieldwork from 1838, record its dimensions as approximately nine metres long by four and a half metres wide, and it appears on the original six-inch OS map of that same year. The graveyard enclosing it is considerably larger: a roughly quadrangular space measuring around 45 metres north to south and 35 metres east to west, defined by an earth and stone bank up to 1.7 metres high on its outer face, that outer face itself lined with a vertical drystone wall. Three sides of the enclosure run in straight lines; the western wall alone curves slightly, a small irregularity that hints at an older, perhaps organic boundary beneath the more formal layout. A modern gate sits towards the southern end of the eastern wall, the one concession to practical access in an otherwise ancient arrangement.

The setting gives the place a particular quality. Reached across an agricultural field rather than along a path, the enclosure sits at the highest point of the ridge with steeper ground falling away to the north and south. Visitors approaching in summer, when wheat is standing, would do well to check access with the landowner beforehand. Once inside the bank, the overgrown church ruin rewards patience: the walls may only be legible as low ridges beneath bramble and grass, but the outline of the building, small and rectangular, can still be traced if you look carefully at ground level.

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Pete F
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