Graveyard, Kilquiggin, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Burial Grounds
A graveyard with no headstones, no grave-markers, and no visible sign that it was ever used to bury the dead, and yet the ground itself carries the memory of the place.
At Kilquiggin in County Wicklow, a faint earthwork scarp traces the outline of a large oval enclosure on the south-eastern edge of a low ridge, measuring roughly 110 metres on its north-east to south-west axis and 90 metres across. The only clue that something significant once stood here is the slight drop in the land where the enclosure edge meets the surrounding field.
The site appears as a dashed line on the first edition six-inch Ordnance Survey map, surveyed in 1838, which at least confirms it was already a recognised boundary by then, though its origins are likely far older. The oval shape and scale of the enclosure suggest it may originally have been an early ecclesiastical enclosure, the kind of roughly circular or oval boundary, typically defined by an earthen bank or wall, that was commonly laid out around early Irish churches and their associated buildings. A font was recorded within the enclosure, a stone basin used to hold water for religious purposes, which supports the possibility that a church or chapel once stood here. A stone cross has also been noted roughly 160 metres to the north-west, a further hint at a once-active religious landscape in this quiet corner of Wicklow that has since retreated almost entirely into the earth.
