Graveyard, Kilmurry, Co. Wicklow

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Burial Grounds

Graveyard, Kilmurry, Co. Wicklow

On a gently sloping hillside in Kilmurry, Co. Wicklow, there is a graveyard that has been partially erased, not by time alone, but by machinery.

The rectangular enclosure, roughly 40 metres north to south and 35 metres east to west, still holds its southern boundary in the form of a stone wall, and the eastern edge can be traced as a line of collapsed material. But on the northern and western sides, bulldozer clearance has obscured whatever boundary once existed, and the interior itself has been used as a dump for stone and debris cleared from surrounding fields. The result is a site caught between survival and obliteration, its outline legible if you know what to look for, its former purpose buried under agricultural tidying.

The enclosure sits on a north-east-facing slope and is thought to be connected to a church and graveyard immediately to its east. That association, if confirmed, would suggest this rectangular plot formed part of a wider ecclesiastical complex, perhaps an ancillary burial ground or an earlier phase of the same site. Enclosed graveyards attached to early Irish churches were often defined by a cashel or enclosing wall, and the surviving southern wall here may be a remnant of exactly that kind of boundary. The damage to the northern and western perimeter makes it difficult to read the full original shape, though the remaining dimensions give a reasonable sense of the enclosure's modest scale.

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Pete F
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