Sample Field Trip #1

8. Glencree

On the ridges of high ground to the east the granite outcropped and its exploitation is evident in the relict quarry sites. Georgian Dublin was given its character by the use of this granite as cornerstones, window lintels and stepways in city squares and as paving stones on its streets. Eastwards towards the Irish Sea is Glencree Valley watered by Glencree and Dargle rivers. We have only travelled a short distance but this valley has a rather different personality than Glenasmole. There is no evidence here of cluster settlement and the documents infer that this was a rigidly controlled place by its Powerscourt landlords who acquired the O'Toole patrimony in the late sixteenth century. So there are different degrees of anglicisation which the geographer attempts to measure. There are two significant differences here: the military barracks at the head of the glen and the suite of great landlord houses and demesnes beyond the roche moutonnee at Knockree. The barracks looks towards the east and is a manifestation of Imperial power. It is detached, it could in a sense be anywhere. The Catholic church adjacent tells us that the soldiers belonged to the majority religion. The building when vacated by the military became a reformatory run by the Marist Order. It must have been a grim place for the city 'delinquents' and the large regular fields around the complex suggest that they spent time outdoors. Today the place is a reconciliation centre devoted to peace not war.

At the end of the glen which faces Sugarloaf there is a cluster of a rather different kind than we noted in Glenasmole - a grouping of some of Ireland's finest landlord houses - Powerscourt, Charleville, Bushy Park and, a distance away, Kilruddery. Powerscourt was burned down accidentially but its gardens and general landscape features present a vivid contrast to the bare countryside we have travelled through. Close by is the landlord town of Enniskerry. These enterprises were not totally financed from glen land but their owners had properties and interests elsewhere in Ireland or in Britain. Wicklow was a much sought after site by military families in the eighteenth century. It was a fashionable place where the landscape, in particular the kinder eastern valleys, gave scope for ingenious landscape gardening.

The upper Lough Bray corrie

Leaving Glencree behind we climb the mountain beyond the cottage where John Millington Synge sometimes stayed on his visits to his native heath and come upon two dramatic examples of corrie glaciation. Lough Bray Lower and behind Lough Bray Upper are both accessible but the Upper Lough has a long walk from the road. Corries or cirques are evidence of local mountain glaciers which moved downhill and left behind deep water filled depressions blocked by terminal moraines. Moraines here, particularly that at the upper Lake, are great masses of unsorted material plucked from the backwalls and floors of the corries. Some massive boulders were carried downhill before the glacier lost its energy supply. Between the armchair shaped corries is the classic arete. Beyond the Upper Lough Bray the mountain levels out in a kind of peneplane with wide expanses of quaking bog between Kippure and Tonduff (literally the mountain with the black backside). In this reservoir lies the origins of three of Ireland's famed rivers, Liffey, Dargle and Dodder, but each makes its own independent way to the sea as you can determine from a map. Mechanical, as distinct from hand cutting, has seriously damaged the fragile ecosystem here by removing the protective skin of heather and thereby led to more rapid run-off and erosion. It is difficult to understand why such a system was allowed to operate in this most important catchment for Dublin's water supply as the minimal amount of peat saved could hardly justify such destruction.