Rock art, Ballintemple, Co. Wicklow
Co. Wicklow |
Settlement Sites
In the south-west corner of Ballintemple graveyard in County Wicklow, a thin stone slab leans quietly among the vegetation, its surface marked with carvings that predate the Christian landscape around it by a considerable stretch.
The slab, roughly a metre long and just eleven centimetres thick, carries eight circular cupmarks, ranging in diameter from three to nine centimetres, along with five linear grooves or oblong-shaped depressions, and one larger, anomalous motif that researchers have described as resembling a footprint. Cupmarks are among the oldest forms of rock art found in Ireland, shallow depressions pecked into stone whose precise meaning or purpose remains genuinely unknown, which makes the footprint-like form here all the more arresting.
The stone was discovered in 2010 and documented by Dr. Clíodhna Ní Lionáin of the UCD Wicklow Rock Art project, who noted that it may not be in its original location. That uncertainty matters, because the graveyard itself sits within a dense cluster of early activity. The D-shaped enclosure of the graveyard may follow the outline of an Early Christian ecclesiastical boundary, and the site sits south-west of a levelled medieval church. Roughly 150 metres to the north-west lies a holy well dedicated to Saint Brigid, and the cropmark of a levelled ringfort has been identified in the field to the south. The decorated stone, in other words, ended up in a place already layered with centuries of use, which makes it difficult to say where it originated or what relationship, if any, it had to the surrounding sites.
The site is not currently accessible. Dense vegetation inside the graveyard covers the stone, and visitors should not expect to locate or examine it on a casual visit. The Wicklow Rock Art project has documented the carving in detail, and that record remains the most reliable way to understand what the stone looks like and what it may represent.