Brilliant Belfast

My knowledge of Belfast was scant, limited to a day trip in the 1980s and a few times passing through travelling to other places. So when my brother-in-law was heading there for a couple of days to take in a gig, I heartily accepted his invite to come along. We arrived on the day of the Stormont elections and I assumed the crowd gathering at the building opposite our hotel was election-related. I was wrong. This is the Presbyterian Assembly Buildings and church ministers from across Ireland were meeting that week. Designed like a Scottish baronial castle, the gothic structure boasts a 40m-high clock tower and a tower housing Belfast’s only peal of 12 bells, which chime hymns and carols every hour. The building was officially opened by The Duke of Argyll, brother-in-law of King Edward VII, in 1905 General Assembly Week.

Down the road is the Europa Hotel. It’s ironic there is a vehicle marked “fire” parked here as the Europa has seen its fair share of fire this past half century. Built on the site of the Great Northern Railway in 1966 in a brief time of optimism before the Troubles, the 12-storey building was then Belfast’s tallest. When the conflict broke out, it was an obvious target. It was first bombed in August 1971 five days before its official opening which went ahead anyway. Over the years it became “the most bombed hotel in Europe” and hosted more journalists than tourists. The Europa was bombed over 30 times but was never destroyed and only closed its doors briefly twice. The four-star hotel is still going strong despite COVID and celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2021. It remains fondly loved by locals and a large overseas clientele including Bill Clinton.

A two minute walk away, and beloved of the Europa’s thirsty journalists, is Belfast’s most famous pub, the Crown Liquor Saloon. Felix O’Hanlon opened this magnificent ornate pub to service the Lisburn stagecoach in 1826. It was renamed the Railway Tavern when the Lisburn rail line opened in 1839. In the 1850s, O’Hanlon sold the bar to the Flanagan family. In 1885, architecture student Patrick Flanagan returned home after travels impressed by the coffee houses and beer-halls of Europe. He hired Italian craftsmen to do the tiling, glasswork and rich ornamental woodwork. When the sun beams through the decorative windows, the pub seems like a baroque church. There are ten elaborately carved wooden snugs, lettered A-J, guarded by heraldic lions or gryffons. The snugs feature black upholstered seats, nickel plates for striking matches, and an antique push-bell system to contact staff.

Also nearby is the opera house. Built in 1895 at the height of Belfast’s power as Britain’s premier shipbuilding city, it had several name changes before settling on the Grand Opera House in 1909. On January 13, 1944 the US Army presented Irving Berlin’s ‘This is The Army’ here, watched by General Dwight Eisenhower, who was awarded the Freedom of the City of Belfast. The Opera House, like the Crown bar, suffered collateral damage when the Europa was bombed but kept its doors open. It underwent a major restoration in 2020 for its 125th anniversary.

Another five minutes away is Donegall Square, home of Belfast’s ornate city hall. Belfast thrived in the 18th century as a merchant town, importing goods from Britain and exporting linen products in return. In 1784 plans were drawn up for the White Linen Hall along with new streets, Donegall Square and Donegall Place. In the 19th century, Belfast became Ireland’s pre-eminent industrial city with industries in linen, heavy engineering, tobacco and shipbuilding dominating trade. When Belfast achieved city status in 1888, the old White Linen Hall was not considered imposing enough. This magnificent Edwardian wedding cake building costing £360,000 replaced the old structure. The dome is 53 metres high and above the door is the figure of Hibernia encouraging the commerce and arts of the city.

A 10 minute walk from city hall is Belfast’s “flat iron” pub, Bittles Bar. Founded in 1868 the bar was originally called the Shakespeare reflecting its theatrical clientele. Bright oils of Irish literary luminaries including Oscar Wilde, W.B. Yeats, James Joyce and Samuel Beckett drape the walls, all painted by a customer now in his 80s, while a cluster of murals evoke the contested history of Northern Ireland. Bittles was firebombed during the Troubles and also suffered damage due to its proximity to Belfast courts.

Another 500m away in the Cathedral Quarter is the Albert Memorial Clock. This handsome clock tower completed in 1869 is one of Belfast’s best known landmarks. In 1865, Ulster Hall designer W.J. Barre won a competition for the design of a memorial to Queen Victoria’s late husband Prince Albert. Organisers secretly gave the contract to the second-placed entry but after public outcry they awarded it to Barre. The £2500 construction cost was raised by public subscription. The 35m-tall tower is in French and Italian Gothic styles and a statue of Prince Albert adorns the western side. A two-tonne bell is housed in the tower. Because it was built on marshy reclaimed land, the top of the tower leans 1.2m off the perpendicular giving rise to the expression the tower “has the time and the inclination.”

Our destination that evening was an open space near the clock tower where a marquee was set up for the Cathedral Quarter Arts Festival. Live on stage was Scottish band Mogwai. Not entirely my cup of tea and I would have liked more than just the one vocal track, but I always enjoy live music, particularly grateful post COVID. These guys were LOUD.

The following morning we wandered down towards the Lagan river. First up was a giant sculpture called Bigfish, a printed ceramic mosaic sculpture by John Kindness. Commonly known as the “Salmon of Knowledge” the sculpture is based on a character from “The Boyhood Deeds of Fionn” which tells of a fish that eats hazelnuts which fell into the Well of Wisdom. After eating the nuts, the salmon gained all the knowledge in the world. The legend says the first person to eat the fish would then inherit all its knowledge. Bigfish was constructed in 1999 to celebrate the return of fish to the river. Each tile is decorated with texts or images that relate to Belfast’s history.

The reason salmon are returning is the Lagan Weir. Completed in 1994 for £14m, the weir controls upstream water levels and reduces mud flats at low tide. The weir is a series of massive steel barriers raised as the tide retreats to keep the river at an artificially constant level. The Lagan rises from the Slieve Croob mountain in County Down and meanders 86km north before entering the sea at Belfast Lough. Abhainn an Lagáin is Irish for ‘river of the low-lying district’.

The three Belfast Buoys are landmarks with a new home on the Maritime Mile. The Commissioners of Irish Lights gave them to Belfast City Council in 1983. They were located in the Cathedral Gardens, known as “Buoy Park”. Regeneration around Ulster University meant they needed a new home. Maritime Belfast worked with Titanic Quarter Limited and Belfast City Council to bring the buoys to the Abercorn Basin. Buoys were recorded in Spain in 1295 (‘boyar’ means to float in Spanish) and first used around Ireland in the 1800s as shipping and trade boomed. The three 80-year-old Belfast buoys were used by mariners to find a safe channel to and from port. The can-shaped red buoy marked the left side of the channel, the conical black buoy the right side, and the spherical red-striped buoy marked the middle ground. They weigh three tonnes and are made of thick steel plates riveted together. They are hollow, filled with air to allow them to float, and were secured in place by mooring chains, attached to a cast iron sinker on the sea bed.

Behind the Maritime Mile on Queen’s Island are two giant Harland and Wolff gantry cranes, named for biblical figures Samson and Goliath. German engineering firm Krupp constructed the cranes, completing Goliath (pictured) in 1969 and Samson, in 1974. Goliath stands 96 metres tall, while Samson is taller at 106m. The last ship launched at the yard was a ferry in 2003 and since then the yard focused on design and structural engineering and ship repair. Harland and Wolff went bust in 2019, but the cranes were retained as part of the dry dock facility, designated as historic monuments in 1995.

As we approached the Titanic museum, we passed the dry dock of SS Nomadic, tender to the Titanic. SS Nomadic was launched in Belfast on April 25, 1911. She and running mate SS Traffic were built to transfer passengers and cargo from RMS Olympic and RMS Titanic. In 1912 SS Nomadic transported 274 passengers to the Titanic from Cherbourg including New York millionaire John Jacob Astor IV and new wife Madeleine. The French government used Nomadic as a minesweeper in the First World War and in 1940 she took part in the evacuation of Cherbourg. Nomadic was requisitioned by the Royal Navy and operated as an accommodation ship in Portsmouth. She returned to Cherbourg after the war for tendering duties before being retired in 1968. She was set for the scrap heap in 2005 before the Northern Irish government bought her at auction for the Titanic precinct. She is the only White Star Line vessel in existence today.

On to the magnificent Titanic museum. This huge space, opened in 2012 on the 100th anniversary of the sinking, is a monument to Belfast’s maritime heritage. It is on the site of the former Harland & Wolff shipyard and celebrates where RMS Titanic was built. The £77 million building is on Queen’s Island, an ambitious land reclaiming project undertaken by the forward-thinking Belfast Harbour Commissioners in the mid-19th century. It became Britain’s largest shipping yards though was derelict by the early 21st century. The building’s angular form imitates the shape of ships’ prows, with its main prow angled down the middle of the Titanic and Olympic slipways towards the river. It is 38m tall, the same height as Titanic‘s hull.

Titanic, the supposedly unsinkable flagship of the White Star, went down in mid Atlantic on its maiden voyage at 2.20am on April 15, 1912, with the deaths of 1517 passengers and crew (including Astor, though wife Madeleine survived). It was the worst disaster at sea ever at the time and remains among the top peacetime sinking behind the Filipino Dona Paz (1987) and the Senegalese Le Joola (2002) disasters, neither of which have inspired Hollywood movies. Over 110 years later Titanic has kept its grip on the public imagination and the museum was packed with post-COVID visitors. It is a fantastic museum with many interactive exhibits and captures the scale of ship and the great people of Belfast that built it. My one criticism is it did not address the sectarianism at the heart of the shipyard. In the 1920s, Catholic workers were expelled from the yards while the shipyard workers were the target of nationalist gunmen. The violence of unionist retaliation was an exacerbating factor in the troubles of 1969.

On the walk back to town, I stuck my head inside St Anne’s, Belfast’s Protestant cathedral. The imposing church was built from 1899-1903 and the 40-metre stainless steel “Spire of Hope” was installed in 2007. The base section of the spire is visible from the nave through a glass platform in the roof. Leader of the Unionist cause in the First World War, Sir Edward Carson, was buried here in 1935.

Walking made us thirsty and we called in at the Sunflower for a pint. Known as the Tavern during the Troubles, the distinctive green cage was added in the late 1980s as a security measure after a shooting at the pub. It is now the last of its kind in Belfast. There was uproar in 2013 when a government department wanted the pub to remove the cage as “an impediment on the road”. The owners had “become very fond of it” and successfully mounted a campaign to keep it. It remains an Instagram-worthy reminder of times past.

There were more reminders of times past on a walk up Falls Road on the last morning of our visit. The road is the heart of Catholic west Belfast and has many impressive murals such as this one in the Belfast Gaeltacht district. Éirí Amach na Cásca is Irish for the Easter Rising, the 1916 event which led to the 1919-1921 War of Independence. The mural was painted for the 90th anniversary of the rising in 2006 and reproduces a 1941 Victor Brown stamp showing an armed volunteer outside the Dublin GPO. The Rising led to the Government of Ireland Act 1920 which set up six-county Northern Ireland as a separate statelet from the rest of Ireland, which Belfast Catholics never accepted. The Troubles began when streets around the Falls Road were burnt out by armed ‘B’ Specials (Police Reserve) and loyalists in August 1969 murdering six Catholics and setting off a chain of events that led to 30 years of armed violence. The Falls Road is quieter these days, but maintains an air of defiance with graffiti such as “PSNI, British Army, MI5 not welcome here”. Though the Belfast hills are nearby, the Falls Road derives its name from the Irish túath na bhFál, an Irish kingdom meaning “territory of the enclosures”.

It being a Saturday morning, my destination was Falls Park, for my first parkrun outside of Australia. Falls Park was part of a 40-hectare reserve Belfast Corporation bought in 1866, some of which was used for nearby Belfast cemetery. Falls Park was established in 1873. It was a great spot for a bracing run in the shadow of the hills to cast off the shackles of the previous night’s imbibing.

There was just enough time for breakfast afterwards before we left town. We had to queue a while to get into this place, called Harlem. It was packed with a diverse crowd of tourists, hipsters, hen parties and families. The great food and ambience made it well worth the wait. Harlem is a symbol of 21st century Belfast: tasteful, vibrant, confident, forward looking and content in its own brilliance. Belfast is simply a great place to spend a while.

A visit to Glasnevin cemetery

My two days in Dublin were busy, catching up with friends and researching in the National Library of Ireland and Royal Irish Academy. I was also determined to get outside and walked 3km from town to Glasnevin cemetery on the northside. The cemetery opened in 1832 and towers were added in the 1840s for nightwatchmen guarding the graveyard against “resurrectionists” who supplied the medical profession with corpses for anatomy students.

My immediate aim was to find the grave of Thomas Meagher MP (1789–1874), father of my research topic, Thomas Francis Meagher. Meagher senior was important in his own right as Waterford’s first Catholic mayor in 150 years and a staunch Pro-Repeal Westminster MP for 10 years between 1847-57. He was born in Newfoundland, and I had assumed he was buried in the family tomb at Faithlegg, Co Waterford. However in later years he retired to Bray and was buried at Glasnevin.

The cemetery archivist gave me his grave number “NC47” but admitted I wouldn’t find it without her help. She walked with me to a grave she believed was the correct one and I thanked her profusely. After she left I closely read the faded inscription and realised it was not Meagher but someone from Tipperary (ironically Meagher’s ancestral homeland). After a few minutes scrambling through other nearby plots, I found Meagher’s grave. The inscription is faint but I could make out “Thomas Meagh… ESQR, formerly MP for …ford” and I could also read “died at Bray 28 February 1874”. However I could not make out the text of two lines underneath. Given Meagher’s importance, the neglected grave could do with love from Waterford Council or a historical society.

With my investigative mission complete, I checked out some better known (and better maintained) graves. I was drawn to the dominating O’Connell tower in the middle of the cemetery. Before Glasnevin, Irish Catholics had no cemeteries. Repressive Penal Laws forced them to conduct services in Protestant graveyards. After an 1823 funeral when a Protestant sexton reprimanded a Catholic priest for conducting mass in his graveyard, Daniel O’Connell launched a campaign saying there was no law forbidding prayer for a dead Catholic in a graveyard. In 1828 O’Connell established the Dublin Cemeteries Committee to provide dignified burial space “for those of all religions and none”. Glasnevin (initially “Prospect Cemetery”) opened four years later. O’Connell’s achievements were huge and spanned half a century but he was most closely associated with two movements, Catholic Emancipation which he achieved in the 1820s and Repeal of the Union which he failed to achieve in the 1840s. When the Liberator died in 1847, he was buried at Glasnevin. In 1855 Dublin architect Patrick Byrne completed the O’Connell Tower and in 1869, O’Connell was reinterred in an ornate crypt at the base of the tower. The 55-metre-tall tower remains one of the highest structures in Dublin.

The O’Connell circle surrounding the tower hosts many well-known graves and monuments. They include a monument for Thomas Davis, Protestant founder of the Young Ireland movement and the Nation newspaper that inspired it. Davis and others were dissatisfied by the pace of reform of O’Connell’s Repeal Association. Young Ireland split off after O’Connell struck a deal to support the Whig government in Westminster in 1846 and launched a failed rebellion in 1848 amid Ireland’s worst Famine (Glasnevin has thousands of famine victims in unmarked graves). Davis saw none of this. He died of scarlet fever in 1845, aged just 30, and was mourned across Ireland, almost as much as O’Connell was two years later. Davis is buried at Mount Jerome cemetery on Dublin’s southside but this stone was unveiled in 2014 at Glasnevin in the bicentennial of his birth.

Also in the O’Connell circle is William Martin Murphy (1845-1919). When his Cork building contractor father Denis William Murphy (1799-1863) died, William took over the family business and his enterprise and business acumen expanded it. He was elected an Irish Parliamentary Party MP in 1885. When the party split in 1890 over Charles Stewart Parnell’s leadership, Murphy sided with the majority Anti-Parnellites. Dublin remained a Parnellite stronghold and in the bitter general election of 1892, Murphy lost his seat. In 1900, he bought the insolvent Irish Daily Independent merging it with the Daily Nation. In 1905 he re-launched this as a cheap mass-circulation Irish Independent, which became Ireland’s most popular nationalist paper. Murphy’s anti-union attitude in the 1913 Dublin Lockout brought notoriety as did his calls for the execution of the 1916 Easter Rising leaders. He also opposed the 1918 rise of Sinn Fein but died in 1919 aged 74 just before the war of independence began.

Charles Gavan Duffy, a Young Irelander with strong Australian connections, is also buried in the circle. Duffy, a Monaghan Catholic shopkeeper’s son, edited a Belfast newspaper before founding the Nation in 1842 with Davis and John Blake Dillon. Though arrested for sedition in 1848 Duffy survived five trials before being released. He restarted the Nation and became an MP but became disillusioned with Irish politics. He moved to Melbourne in 1856 and entered Victorian politics on a platform of land reform. He served as deputy premier under fellow Irish Catholic, John O’Shanassy. In 1871-72 he became the colony’s 8th Premier, though was disliked by Victoria’s Protestant majority. He died in Nice, France in 1903, aged 86.

Buried nearby is a great Irishman of the 20th century, Roger Casement. Casement was an Irish patriot, poet and revolutionary, and an important human rights advocate. He was a diplomat with a 30 year career in the British Foreign Service. investigating outrages against indigenous people in the Congo and Brazil enslaved to supply rubber for European manufacturers. In 1911, he was knighted for his courage and integrity in the struggle against international slavery. Yet five years later Britain hanged Casement for treason. He was arrested in Kerry after trying to smuggle 20,000 guns from a German U-Boat for the Irish republican cause. His trial unearthed his “black diaries” of homosexual sexual conquests in Africa and Brazil. Casement was hanged on August 3, 1916 at London’s Pentonville Prison.

The mortuary chapel at Glasnevin was designed by J.J. McCarthy (1817-1882), Ireland’s pre-eminent architect of Catholic churches. The Hiberno-Romanesque church is a symbol of Catholic Ireland in the late 19th century. Outside is a monument to an Gorta Mór (the Great Famine) unveiled by Irish president Michael D. Higgins in 2016 during the 170th anniversary. One million people died from 1846-52 and another one million people emigrated. The combined population of the island of Ireland today is seven million, still a million less than 1845.

Unsurprisingly, Catholic prelates have a dominant position in the cemetery. One of the more imposing monuments is for Edward McCabe (1816-1885), Archbishop of Dublin from 1879 and a cardinal from 1882 until his death. His six years as Archbishop were the years of the Land League and of the National League, and of violent agitation including the Phoenix Park murders and savage coercion. Like his more famous predecessor Paul Cullen, McCabe distrusted popular movements and supported the British government against agitation. Nationalist newspapers and political opponents attacked him as a (Dublin) “Castle bishop”. His life was threatened and for a time he was under the protection of the police.

Because of the Easter Rising and its aftermath, the Irish tend to under-commemorate the First World War. That is a pity because Irish Protestant and Catholic lives were sacrificed in enormous numbers during that war. Over 200,000 Irishmen fought and 30,000 died serving Irish regiments of the British forces. As many as 50,000 may have died altogether. President Higgins and the Duke of Kent dedicated this cross of sacrifice in 2014 “to the memory of all the soldiers from Ireland who died in the World Wars”.

This poignant memorial honours those who died in the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. The 30-year Northern Ireland conflict mostly avoided the 26 counties but Protestant paramilitary group the Ulster Volunteer Force brought the war south on May 17, 1974 during the Ulster Workers Council strike, detonating four bombs without warning. Three bombs exploded in Dublin during the evening rush hour and a fourth exploded in Monaghan 90 minutes later. They killed 33 civilians and injured almost 300. The bombings were the deadliest attack of the conflict and the deadliest attack in the Republic’s history.

On O’Connell circle is another man with a statue on O’Connell St, Sir John Gray (1815-1875). Gray was a doctor, owner of the Freeman’s Journal, and MP for Kilkenny from 1865 until his death. He supported O’Connell and later, Parnell. Gray was elected Dublin Corporation councillor in 1852 and as chairman of the committee for a new water supply to Dublin, promoted a reservoir scheme to dam the Vartry river in Wicklow, and build water pipes and filtering systems to carry fresh water to the city. The Vartry Scheme improved sanitation and helped reduce outbreaks of cholera, typhus and other diseases associated with contaminated water.

Jeremiah O’Donovan Rossa (1831-1915) was a Fenian leader and member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. A West Cork man, he established the Phoenix National and Literary Society in 1856 “to liberate Ireland by force of arms”. His organisation merged with the IRB two years later. Rossa was jailed without trial until July 1859. In 1865 he was arrested again on charges of treason felony. He was sentenced to penal servitude for life due to previous convictions. He served time in Pentonville, Portland, Millbank and Chatham prisons in England. In an 1869 by-election, he was elected MP for Tipperary but the election was declared invalid because Rossa was an imprisoned felon. Released in 1870 he went to America where he joined Clan na Gael and the Fenian Brotherhood and established the United Irishman newspaper. In the 1880s Rossa organised the first ever Republican bombings of English cities in the “dynamite campaign” making him infamous in Britain. His death in 1915 and graveside oration by Patrick Pearse was a major catalyst for the 1916 Easter Rising.

Near Rossa’s grave lies another important Irish-American revolutionary, John Devoy (1842-1928). In 60 years of activism he played a role in the 1867 Fenian Rising, the 1916 Easter Rising and the Irish War of Independence 1919–1921. Devoy was chief Fenian organiser in the British Army in Ireland. The British got wind of plans for revolution and arrested Devoy in February 1866. After serving five years in English prisons he was released and emigrated to America with Rossa. He was one of the organisers of the Catalpa escape from Western Australia and was the most important Irish nationalist fundraiser in America. He fell out with De Valera on his American visit in 1920 and he supported pro-Treaty forces in the civil war.

Another man on an O’Connell St statue, Jim Larkin (1878-1947), was an Irish trade unionist who opposed William Martin Murphy in the 1913 Dublin Lockout. Born in Liverpool to Irish parents, Larkin joined Merseyside docks unions and in 1907 took his organising skills to Belfast and later to Dublin, Cork and Waterford. Larkin founded the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union in 1908 and helped found the Irish Labour Party in 1912. In 1913 Murphy dismissed 340 tramway workers from his Dublin United Tramway Company who wanted to join the ITGWU and got 400 city employers to insist workers sign a pledge not to join the union. A general strike lasted seven months and was the most severe in Ireland’s history. Larkin was arrested for sedition and served seven months. Afterwards he went to America where he joined the Wobblies and other socialist organisations. He was sentenced to five to 10 years in Sing Sing for left-wing activism and later returned to Ireland to advocate for the Labour party and unionism.

Maud Gonne (1867-1953) was an unlikely Irish revolutionary. Born in Aldershot she moved to Ireland when her army officer father was posted to Dublin in 1882. On her mother’s death in 1887 she became independently wealthy and met W.B. Yeats two years later. The poet fell hopelessly in love with her, though it was unrequited. She was more in love with Irish nationalism and the plight of evicted people in the Land Wars. In 1903 in Paris, Gonne married Major John MacBride, who led the Irish Transvaal Brigade against the British in the Second Boer War. Their son Seán MacBride (also buried here) was born a year later. McBride senior was executed in May 1916 for his role in the Easter Rising. In Paris in 1921, Gonne opposed the Treaty and moved to Dublin in 1922 before being arrested a year later, serving 20 days. Gonne was a leading figure in the Catholic monetary reform movement in Ireland in the 1930s and a member of the Irish Social Credit Party committed to reforming Ireland’s financial and economic systems.

Michael Collins (1890-1922) has probably the most visited grave in Glasnevin. Collins was another Cork man who got involved in the IRB in London. He returned to Ireland to fight in the Easter Rising at the GPO as Joseph Plunkett’s aide-de-camp and became a leader of interned rebels after the revolution. In the 1918 Sinn Fein landslide election, Collins was elected MP for South Cork. He sat in Dublin not Westminster, becoming Minister for Finance in the First Dáil. In the War of Independence, he was Director of Organisation and Adjutant General for the Irish Volunteers, and Director of Intelligence of the Irish Republican Army. He was a brilliant guerrilla warfare strategist, planning many successful attacks on British forces. After the July 1921 ceasefire, Collins was a key plenipotentiary sent to negotiate peace terms in London. The resulting Anglo-Irish Treaty, signed in December 1921, established the Irish Free State but depended on an oath of allegiance to the Crown. Collins prophetically viewed the treaty as offering “the freedom to achieve freedom”, and persuaded a narrow Dáil majority to ratify the treaty. He was chair of the provisional government in early 1922 and commander-in-chief of the National Army in the civil war. He was shot and killed in an ambush by anti-Treaty forces on August 22, 1922.

Collins’ alter ego and frenemy Eamon De Valera is buried a discreet distance away in the De Valera family plot. Born George de Valero in Brooklyn, and known as Dev, he was a senior leader in the 1916 Rising but his American birth saved him from a death sentence. De Valera spent much of the war of independence raising money in America, making an enemy of Devoy. He opposed the Treaty but sat out the civil war. He eventually rehabilitated himself, founding the Fianna Fail political party and the Irish Press newspaper, becoming Taoiseach for 20 years over three terms, and dominating Irish politics for half a century. He was influential on both sides of the border, a thorn in the British side and had outsized impact on American affairs between 1918 and 1945. Ireland was such a pain to White House administrations, they mostly left it out of the Marshall Plan that revitalised post-war allies and enemies alike. By the late 1950s the Irish economy was in deep trouble due to de Valera’s economy naivety. Though an almost totally blind caricature of the remote and exotic president of the Irish Republic he helped create and shape in his deeply religious image, he clung to power until 1959. Then, aged 76, he was forcibly retired upstairs as president in “the Park”. In a supposed ceremonial role, he wielded enormous influence for 14 more years in two terms. He died in 1975 aged 92.

There was one last grave I wanted to visit, an imposing stone slab well away from other notables. That was the grave of Charles Stewart Parnell. Parnell emerged from a powerful Anglo-Irish Protestant Wicklow landowning family to become an MP from 1875 to 1891 as the most effective Irish nationalist politician of his era. He led the Home Rule League from 1880 to 1882 and transformed the Irish Parliamentary Party into the first modern political party, holding the balance of power during the Home Rule debates of 1885–86. He was imprisoned in Kilmainham in 1882, but he was released after renouncing violent action. His party discipline forced Gladstone to adopt Irish Home Rule as Liberal Party policy. The Irish Parliamentary Party split in 1890, following the revelation of Parnell’s long adulterous love affair. He never recovered from the scandal and he died a broken man a year later. Pro and anti Parnell feelings ran high for 20 years and was second only to the civil war in Irish political divisiveness. His gravestone of unhewn Wicklow granite, erected in 1940, reads simply “Parnell” and is all the more impressive for its stern brevity.

Ballingarry Famine Warhouse 1848 and the Young Ireland rebellion

The Famine Warhouse of 1848. (All photos from author’s collection unless otherwise stated)

Deep in the hills of Kilkenny and Tipperary border country lies the Ballingarry Famine Warhouse of 1848. This imposing house was the scene of the ill-fated 1848 Young Ireland rebellion. Though the revolution barely deserves that name as it was little more than a skirmish where just two people died, the house is an important if under-recognised site of Irish history. The Famine Warhouse is now a state-run museum under the stewardship of 76-year-old John Webster. John kindly showed me around on my recent visit. I was there as part of my research into Young Ireland leader and later American civil war general, Thomas Francis Meagher. Meagher was not present at the house on the day of the battle of July 29, though John assured me he had been in the area the night before.

Curator John Webster at the Warhouse.

The Warhouse was built in 1844 around an older house as the home of coalmine owner Thomas McCormack and wife Margaret. They farmed 65 acres but Thomas died in the Famine leaving Margaret to raise their five children alone. The McCormacks left for America in 1853 and the house passed to the Walsh family and then the Morris family then the Connollys who sold it to the Irish state in 1998. It was renovated in 2000–01 and was renamed “Famine Warhouse 1848” in 2004. Today it houses a museum with informative exhibits on the Famine and the rebellion and its aftermath amid the upheaval that rocked Europe during that turbulent year.

Helen Walsh at the gate of the house in the early 1900s. Photo: Ballingarry Famine Warhouse

The house is at Farranfory, a townland 5km from Ballingarry, set in what is now beautiful woodlands. In 1848 it was unwooded and visible from nearby The Commons, a small village north of Ballingarry. This area was, unusually for Ireland, rich in coal, and miners worked the seams for small private companies including McCormack’s. Miners were willing rebels for the Young Ireland movement which was unhappy with the pace of reform of Daniel O’Connell’s Repeal Association which aimed to repeal the 1801 Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland. Inspired by the European year of revolution in 1848, Young Irelanders tried to raise the Irish population but were watched closely by British authorities. Westminster suspended habeas corpus in Ireland on July 22, 1848. Led by MP William Smith O’Brien, Young Irelanders went on the run to foment rebellion in south-east Ireland amid the country’s worst ever Famine. A million died of famine fever (typhus spread by lice), dysentery, and dropsy. Young Ireland had success in raising willing rebels in Kilkenny and Carrick-on-Suir but each time they moved on, priests would discourage locals from fighting.

The rolling hills north-east of the warhouse.

In the Mullinahone-Ballingarry coalmining region of northern Tipperary, O’Brien raised an “army” of 600 peasants. Only 50 had muskets and 150 had scythes, pitchforks or pikes. O’Brien exercised the men in the streets practising firing muskets into hedges while John Blake Dillon drilled them in charges. On Friday, July 28 they and fellow leaders Meagher, Terence Bellew MacManus, James Stephens, John O’Mahony, Michael Doheny, Maurice Leyne, James Cantwell, Patrick O’Donohoe, and Thomas Devin Reilly met in the pub in The Commons (also known as Kilcommon) to discuss strategy. They scattered to try to raise more troops. Meagher went towards Waterford but O’Brien, MacManus and Stephens remained at Ballingarry, and they saw the only major action of the rebellion.

The monument at The Commons.

On Saturday, July 29 O’Brien had gathered 300 people. Liverpool woolbroker MacManus handed out a small amount of guns as well as powder and ball. Rebel eye witness John Kavanagh arrived from Dublin with the news that 47 Royal Irish Constabulary officers from Callan were heading north towards Ballingarry. The rebels watched from a makeshift barricade under the cover of coal dust. At the last moment police veered off right on the road to Farranfory. According to Kavanagh, the police “ran like cowards”. Without waiting for orders from O’Brien, the rebels gave chase. The police turned off a byroad towards the Warhouse. They barricaded themselves in using furniture and beds in a “very strong position” according to Kavanagh.

The plaque above the front door of the Warhouse “Remember 48”.

When the rebels arrived at the house it was pouring rain. O’Brien and MacManus reconnoitred and their men occupied the outside walls, outhouses and haggard (hay stand). MacManus wanted to set the hay alight to smoke out the police but O’Brien overruled him. Mrs McCormack’s children were in the house though she was outside. Eldest daughter Catherine, 12 was in charge of the children and the London Illustrated News of August 12 quoted her saying, “we all set up a cry when the police came in”. Youngest child Maggy, 2, put her head in Catherine’s lap and asked “Will they kill us?” The guns went off “like thunder” and the children screamed. Mrs McCormack appeared in tears and pushed past the rebels through a cabbage patch demanding to rescue her children. O’Brien followed her to a window.

Smith O’Brien accompanies Widow McCormack to the window of the house. (Drawing from Illustrated London News at the Famine Warhouse)

Police refused her request to release the five hostages while O’Brien demanded they give up their arms. While the police inside the room gave him a cheer, Sub-Inspector Trant was less welcoming believing they could last 48 hours without provisions. When rebels threw stones, Trant ordered a volley of shots. Kavanagh was hit in the thigh and injured. Local man Patrick McBride fell dead beside him. Thomas Walsh was also shot dead as he dashed across the yard though O’Brien and Mrs McCormack were untouched beside the wall. Stephens pulled O’Brien away. The two sides exchanged fire for two to three hours. Local priest Fr Philip Fitzgerald tried to make the peace but neither side would compromise. After they heard another police force were coming from Cashel, Fitzgerald strongly advised the rebels to disperse saying “enough mischief had been done”. The rebels fled before police reinforcements relieved the house. The rebellion, “so much talked of for years, seemed at one blow to have been utterly and forever extinguished”, the priest said. In the following days troops under General McDonald arrived and arrested 21 locals.

William Smith O’Brien (seated) with Thomas Francis Meagher (second left) plus a sentry and the prison warden (right) at Richmond prison in 1848. Photo from Famine Warhouse from a daguerrotype by Leon Gluckman.

O’Brien was sheltered for a week after the rebellion but was captured attempting to board a train in Thurles for his estate at Cahermoyle, Co Limerick. Doheny, Stephens and O’Mahony escaped to Paris and then America. MacManus made it to a ship in Cork bound for America but was recognised aboard and arrested. Meagher and O’Donohoe were arrested near Holycross, Co Tipperary. O’Brien, Meagher, MacManus and O’Donohoe were tried for high treason in Clonmel and sentenced to death. In 1849 their sentence was commuted to transportation to Van Diemen’s Land. All bar O’Brien later escaped to America. He was the only one to ever return to Ireland, though never again to political office. His statue is on O’Connell St. Dublin near his great rival Daniel O’Connell. Though the rising was a miserable failure dismissed as the “cabbage patch rebellion” by English newspapers, historian Tony Moore said the Young Irelander’s success came after their departure from Ireland. They invented a new cultural vocabulary of nationalism, gifting Ireland the idea of an independent nation that Britain could never kill off. The words of the Young Irelanders inspired others to the view that Britain would only grant some independence through violent means. Stephens’ and O’Mahony’s Fenian / IRB movement had its own failed Irish rebellion in 1867. The IRB survived to the 1916 Easter Rising and played an instumental role in the Irish War of Independence under leader Michael Collins.

William Smith O’Brien monument in Dublin.

Clonmacnoise monastic settlement

After a visit to Glendalough, Co Wicklow, I went to an even older monastic settlement a day later. Clonmacnoise, meaning “Meadow of the Sons of Nós” is in the heart of the Irish midlands on the Offaly side of the Shannon River, south of Athlone. Little is known of Nós or his sons, but it is a probable reference to a pre-Christian dynasty of these parts. Arriving before 10am opening time, I admired the broad majestic Shannon and nearby Clonmacnoise Castle. In the 12th century the Anglo-Normans built a motte-and-bailey castle with a wooden keep on a raised area of ground called a motte. The wooden castle was destroyed by fire and in 1214 the Justiciar of Ireland, Henry of London, built a stone castle on the motte to gain control over the midlands and guard the bridge across the Shannon. This marks the time when Clonmacnoise went into decline as a monastic city.

The monastic city next door is of older vintage to the crumbling castle ruin. These lands belonged to the abbot of Clonmacnoise before the Normans arrived. I enjoyed the view from outside the grounds.

Clonmacnoise was founded by Saint Ciarán (c516-c549). With Saints Columba and Brendan, Ciarán was educated by Abbot St. Finnian at the Monastery of Clonard on the Esker Riada, Ireland’s great east-west road. After studying under Abbot St Enda in the Aran Islands, he settled with eight companions at Clonmacnoise where the Esker Riada met the Shannon. In 548, with barely 12 month to live, Ciarán founded an abbey that developed into one of the most famous Irish monastic cities. By the 9th century Clonmacnoise was a great centre of learning.

Outside the entrance is a Jackie McKenna sculpture “the pilgrim”. The subtext says Aedh, son of the chief of Oriel, died on pilgrimage 606 AD. In its World Heritage Site application, Clonmacnoise is listed as “the finest example in the world of an early medieval Insular city”. Unlike the abandoned Iona or Lindisfarne, Clonmacnoise continued to develop after Viking raids. It never grew into a modern city like medieval rival Armagh, declining in the late 12th century, but left “a superb example of a relict monastic city.”

The three high crosses in the Visitor Centre originally stood at Clonmacnoise in a semi-circle west, south and north of the cathedral. Due to deteriorating environmental conditions damaging the stonework and because of their importance as examples of insular art, the three crosses were moved inside in 1992 and high quality replicas cast from resin were placed on their original sites. The best known is the 4m-tall West Cross, the “Cross of the Scriptures” mentioned twice in the Annals of the Four Masters. The shaft and head is carved from one piece of sandstone slotted into the sandstone base. A ring surrounds the arms and shaft but its unique upward tilt gives lightness and vibrancy. The west face depicts scenes from Jesus’s life while the east face panel commemorates the foundation of Clonmacnoise.

The South Cross is also a ringed cross which originally stood at the south-west corner of Temple Dowling. It bears a crucifixion scene on the west side of the shaft and a faint inscription suggests it may have been commissioned by the father of King Flann, Maelsechnaill Mac Maelruanaid, High King of Ireland 846-862. This cross is carved from one piece of sandstone. The surface is covered in panels of interlace, geometric ornament and spirals.

Only the shaft of the North Cross survives with the remains of a tenon at the top, over which the head would have fitted. Three sides of the shaft are decorated; the fourth eastern side is blank, possibly because it may have stood against a building. Its ornaments includes interlaced human figures, animals and panels and has been been dated to c800. The art work is typically insular with spiral motifs. The animals are similar to carved slabs in Scotland, while the human figures have parallels in the Book of Kells.

O’Rourke’s Tower is one of 120 round towers thought to have existed in Ireland, though only 18-20 are still in good condition, plus three in Scotland and one in the Isle of Man. They were principally bell towers as their Irish name cloigthech (bell-house) confirms and they imitated popular European styles of bell tower. The annals date O’Rourke’s round tower to 1124 when finished by Gillachrist Ua Maoileóin, successor of Ciarán, and Toirdelbach Ua Conchobar, king of Connacht, and aspirant to the high kingship of Ireland. It is 5.6 metres in diameter at the base and tapers evenly towards the top at 19 metres, but is missing one third of its original height and its conical cap. It was struck by lightening in 1135 and the reconstructed upper three metres are medieval additions. It is composed of well-shaped rectangular grey limestone blocks quarried at nearby Rocks of Clorhane to the level of the bell-storey windows where the late medieval work uses smaller and more irregular stone. There are 10 windows, one above the doorway and another lintelled window faces north to the Shannon. The other eight reconstructed lintelled windows are at the bell-storey level facing the cardinal compass points. The door faces the west doorway of the church. The tower was re-roofed in the 1980s and fixed ladders were inserted between the floors.

Temple Ciarán dates from the 9th-10th century and is one of six examples of the unique architectural type of the early Irish shrine chapel, the earliest mortared stone structures in Ireland. The others are found at Iona, Ardmore (Waterford), Inishmurray (Sligo), Inchcleraun (Longford) and Labbamolaga (Cork). Temple Ciarán is the only one to have a true-arched doorway. The shrine chapel complements the cathedral (“damliag”) and is an example of the deliberate separation of reliquary and liturgical space practised by Irish clerics in the eighth and ninth centuries. It was built over what was believed to be the burial place of St Ciarán.

At the heart of the monastic complex is the Cathedral, Clonmacnoise’s largest building, next to Temple Dowling and the south cross replica. Also referred to as Temple MacDermot, the cathedral was built by Flann mac Maeleachlainn (879-916) and Colmán (abbot of Clonmacnoise, d.926) as recorded in the 909 annals. This was a year after Flann’s defeat of king Cormac mac Cuilennáin of Munster, in the battle of Belach Mugna after which Flann became high king of Ireland. The cathedral and high cross at Clonmacnoise were acts of thanksgiving to God, and a symbol of royal power and patronage. The church is the largest pre-Romanesque church in Ireland and its core and unicameral appearance have been carefully and deliberately maintained.

Twelfth century alterations to the Cathedral included a new west door and east window, and a sacristy added to the south. In the 13-14th century the south wall was demolished and moved northward by two metres, probably due to structural problems, leaving the west doorway off-centre. In the 15th century, the eastern end was vaulted and a spectacular north doorway was added with a fine limestone carving in perpendicular gothic style with complicated mouldings around the pointed opening.

The cathedral is the resting place of Turlough Ua Conchobair, King of Connaught (died 1156) and his son, Ruairi Ua Conchobair, the last high king of Ireland (died 1198). Ruairi abdicated and spent his final years in retirement in the Augustinian abbey of Cong. In 1207 his remains were disinterred and deposited in a stone shrine, and this may have been when the transitional west doorway and sacristy were added.

The Cathedral doorway is surmounted with high reliefs of three saints: Dominic, Patrick and Francis (Francis’s head is missing) each identified by inscription. Another inscription reads: ‘DNS ODO DECANUS CLUAN ME FIERI FECIT’ indicating Dean Odo (who died in 1461) commissioned the work. It is also known as the Whispering Door for a whisper which travels from one side to the other. Legend says this enabled lepers to get confession without getting close to priests.

Temple Finghin, also known as McCarthy’s Church, is unusually integrated into a round tower. Dating from 1160-70 it is similar to Cormac’s Chapel at Cashel 1127-34, (considered the key building in the introduction of the Romanesque style to Ireland). Fire damaged the Romanesque chancel arch and its inner order is a limestone replacement. Often called the second round tower of Clonmacnoise, it is 16.7 metres high with a diameter of four meters at the base. The conical cap, with its unusual herringbone pattern, was reset in 1879-80. The tower has a door at ground level with no indications that the usual raised door ever existed. Also unusual is the lack of the traditional four bell-storey windows, as there are just two at this level – north and south – lower than the usual bell-storey windows of other towers. Vandalism of the crosses and Temple Finghin chancel arch led to a Kilkenny Archaeological Society investigation. In 1864, the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland raised funds to prosecute John Glennon for “wanton vandalism”. The case failed but it was a key test case for legislation for the protection of public monuments in the United Kingdom, previously only used for museums.

Believers say St Ciarán’s burial at Clonmacnoise ensures all those interred with him will avail of his intervention and gain rapid entry into heaven. The Old Burial Ground dates from the mid-6th century. The graveyards are a part of the sacral landscape for people from Clonmacnoise parish. The old burial ground filled after 1200 years and Offaly County Council closed it in 1955, providing a new burial ground on the east side.

The Nuns’ Church was completed by Derbforgaill (1109-93) in 1167. Derbforgaill was the daughter of the king of Mide (Meath), and wife of Tigernán Ua Ruairc of Bréifne. Her 1152 abduction by the king of Leinster, Diarmait Mac Murchada was a key reason for the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in Ireland and the end of the Gaelic order. According to the Annals of Clonmacnoise, Mac Murchada “kept her for a long space to satisfy his insatiable, carnall and adulterous lust”. She returned to her husband the following year and in 1166, Ua Ruairc and his allies drove Mac Murchada into exile. Mac Murchada enlisted the aid of Henry II of England and precipitated the Anglo-Norman invasion in 1169.

Below is the Cross of the Scriptures replica. Irish high crosses exist from the seventh century, and were later seen in Scotland and Northumbria, though most British crosses were destroyed after the Reformation. High crosses are Ireland’s greatest contribution to Western European art of the middle ages with illuminated manuscripts like the Book of Kells and the Book of Durrow. Most Irish high crosses have the distinctive shape of the ringed Celtic Cross, feature figural decoration and are usually larger and more massive than those elsewhere. High crosses were status symbols for monasteries, sponsors or patrons.

A shrine commemorates Pope John Paul II’s visit to Clonmacnoise on Sunday, September 30, 1979. Despite a supposed “private” devotion, a crowd of 30,000 thronged outside the graveyard to see the pope, many sleeping overnight. The Tullamore Tribune said the pope knelt in prayer before the open air altar and admired diocesan treasures. In his speech he said he wanted to “honour the great monastic contribution to Ireland that was made here on this revered spot for one thousand years and whose influence was carried all over Europe by missionary monks and by students of the monastic school of Clonmacnoise”.

While the buildings promote reverence, it is the River Shannon that truly inspires. As well as being a major transport route which the Vikings exploited, Ireland’s longest river provided the monastery with food and raw materials. Salmon, eels, sturgeon as well as geese and ducks were important food sources. Monks used reeds to thatch roofs and lime-rich shell marl as fertiliser. Winter and summer flooding enriched the land creating a rich mosaic of flora and fauna.

Glendalough monastic settlement

In a return visit to Ireland, one itch I wanted to scratch was the famous monastic settlement at Glendalough Co Wicklow, a place I’d somehow managed to avoid in all my years living in nearby Dublin. Glendalough combines stunning scenery with evocative ruined architecture, including distinctively Irish styles such as its famous round tower. Gleann Dá Loch is Irish for valley of two lakes. The valley was carved out by Ice Age glaciers and the two lakes were formed when the ice eventually thawed. The valley is home to one of Ireland’s most impressive monastic sites founded by St. Kevin in the sixth century. St Kevin’s austere life attracted many followers leading to a monastic city and eventually a site of great pilgrimage.

Glendalough is a monastic settlement known as the city of the seven churches. Saint Kevin, or Cóemgen, died in 618 or 622 at the supposed age of 120, and his story is preserved in three Saints Lives, all composed many years after his death. Saint Kevin was a Leinster nobleman turned priest who retreated into the wilderness to be closer to God. Initially he spent his time in isolation at the shores of the Upper Lake, but after seven years he founded the main monastic complex at the eastern end of the Lower Lake in the late sixth / early seventh century. The monastery rose to a position of pre-dominance before subsequent decline. Most buildings that survive today date from the 10-12th centuries. Despite attacks by Vikings, Glendalough thrived as one of Ireland’s great ecclesiastical foundations and schools of learning until the Normans destroyed the monastery in 1214.

Glendalough was enclosed within a circular wall. Early medieval monastic enclosures were enclosed for defence but also defined sacred space. The gatehouse marks the formal entrance to the complex, although the steps are a recent addition. The entrance arch is Ireland’s only surviving example of a medieval gateway to an early monastic city. The Roman style columns have the stones cut specifically to scale and they held themselves up without mortar. This structure was originally two-storied with two fine granite arches.

St. Kevin’s Church, better known as St. Kevin’s Kitchen, is a nave-and-chancel church of the 12th century. People believed the bell tower was a chimney to a kitchen but no food was cooked there. This stone-roofed building originally had a nave only, with entrance at the west end and a small round-headed window in the east gable. The belfry with its conical cap and four small windows rises from the west end of the stone roof in the form of a miniature round tower.

Monasteries were not just places of contemplation, but also centres of political and economic power. As Glendalough grew in significance, it became entangled in broader political conflicts. The importance and wealth of the monastery saw it targeted by Viking raids in 836. The destruction of the “dertrach” (“oak house”, probably meaning timber church) is noted in the Annals. Through the late tenth and eleventh century it was repeatedly attacked by Viking and Irish raiders, with several records of the area being burnt.

West of St Kevin’s Cross lies a small Romanesque building known as the Priest’s house with a decorative arch at the east end. The name derives from an 18th century practice of bringing the priests to be readied for burial and also burying priests in the floor. The house was almost totally reconstructed from the original stones, based on a 1779 sketch made by Beranger. Its original purpose is unknown although it may have been used to house relics of St. Kevin.

The Cathedral of St Peter and St Paul is the largest of the seven churches in Glendalough. It was built in several phases from the 10th through the early 13th century.

Large mica schist stones, which form the foundation of the cathedral to the height of the west doorway, were re-used from an earlier smaller church. The earliest part is the nave with antae for supporting the wooden roof. The chancel, sacristy, and north door were added in the late 12th and early 13th centuries as was the north doorway. Inside there is a wall cupboard, a stone font, grave slabs, and the remains of a decorated arch. The original cathedral was probably built c1100 as Glendalough became the seat of a bishopric. The walls of the cathedral include distinctive stones reused from an earlier stone church, which appears to have been entirely removed and rebuilt.

The round tower probably dates to c1100 and is 30 metres high, with an entrance 3.5 metres from the base. It was built of mica-slate interspersed with granite. The tower originally had six timber floors, connected by ladders. The top storey has four windows facing the cardinal compass points while the four storeys below have one small window. The roof was reconstructed in 1876. Round towers were built as bell towers to summon the monks to prayer, but also served as store-houses and as places of refuge during attacks.

Near the cathedral is the large St Kevin’s Cross of uncertain date. This unpierced ring cross combines Christian and pagan motifs with a circle representing the sun.

By the later eleventh century, Muirchertach Ua Briain, High King of Munster promoted Glendalough as a rival to Dublin. In 1111 Dublin was subsumed into the Diocese of Glendalough. Many of the ecclesiastical buildings valley date to this period – the height of its power and influence in the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. However, by the later twelfth century Glendalough’s influence declined as Munster’s influence waned: Glendalough was burned again in 1163. In 1214 the Archbishop of Tuam reported that “although anciently held in great veneration (Glendalough) became waste and desolate, and has been so for years past, instead of a church it became a den of thieves and a nest of robbers, occasioned by its being a vast and solitary desert”. By 1216 it was incorporated into the Diocese of Dublin.

The graveyard, which is still in active use for burial, contains examples of reused early medieval cross marked grave slabs. The graveyard contains over 2000 grave markers. The earliest graves are east of the Priest’s House, where plain slabs date to the 11th century. The earliest grave marker commemorates Murlagh Doyle and dates to 1697.

There are many fine examples of Aughrim granite gravestones which date from the late 18th century. The inscription on this one is “Here lieth ye | body of The | Reverd PHELIN | BRYAN Decd Ma | y 3rd 1759 aged | 57 yrs”.

The popular walk along the north shore of the Upper Lake follows the miners road, and the remains of miner’s cottages are found along it. The miners planted a million trees in the mid-nineteenth century
alone, mainly to use as pit props but also as a commercial crop.

The Upper Lake is closely associated with the story of Kevin’s retreat into the wilderness. The lawns east of the lake were formerly known as Kevin’s Desert (Disert Chaoimhghin), supposedly a wilderness and place for the classic early Christian retreat into nature. However there was little good archaeological evidence for early activity at the Upper Lake. Some simple mica schist crosses and cross slabs are likely early medieval, but there was nothing that could be associated with the supposed period of Kevin’s presence apart from the ‘caher’ near the lake – a circular stone and earth wall – which UCD researchers have radiocarbon dated early activity to c. 428–593.

Situated in the Glendalough Woods Nature Reserve is Poulanass waterfall. It marks a sudden drop where a hanging valley meets the main Glendalough Valley. During the last Ice Age a glacier flowing down the small valley was cut off when a larger glacier carved a deeper channel in the Glendalough Valley

Prehistoric communities were present in the area and excavations have recovered small amounts of prehistoric artefact such Neolithic/Bronze Age stone tools and possible early Neolithic carinated bowl pottery. Over 100 charcoal production platforms are recorded around the Upper Lake mainly
now located in woodland. These sites are platforms cut into the hill slopes, providing a flat surface on which wood could be stacked, covered and then fired during summer time.

The Wicklow Way follows the old pilgrimage route down the valley to Glendalough and the flagstones of the old pilgrimage road are visible in sections. It’s hard to believe this beautiful site is just 50km from Dublin.

St Kevin’s Way follows the footsteps of St Kevin to Glendalough. Medieval pilgrims came from far and wide to visit his tomb after his death in 618. Main routes come from Hollywood and Valleymount and they join at Ballinagee Bridge before climbing to the highest point on the route at Wicklow Gap, a classic wind gap (a dry valley once occupied by a stream or river, since captured by another stream).