Grave Yard, Lugduff, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Burial Grounds
In the Lugduff area of County Wicklow, an old graveyard sits with an outline that defies the tidy rectangles typical of organised ecclesiastical burial grounds.
Its irregular shape, preserved across all editions of the Ordnance Survey six-inch maps, suggests a site that predates any formal planning, its boundaries likely shaped by the terrain, older land divisions, or the slow accumulation of use over generations rather than any single act of enclosure.
The graveyard is closely associated with a church located a short distance to the south-west, and together the two features point to a small, localised religious settlement of the kind found scattered throughout the Wicklow uplands. Such pairings of church and burial ground were common across rural Ireland, often originating in early medieval or medieval foundations that served dispersed farming communities. The irregular boundary of this particular graveyard may reflect organic growth over a long period, with the ground expanding incrementally as the local population required it, rather than being laid out to a predetermined plan.