Sample Field Trip #1

9. Sallygap

Remaining in County Wicklow we turn onto the L161 at the Sally Gap to begin our descent. From the map you can read the mountains which stretch like necklace beads away to the south-Gravale (2,352), Duff Hill (2,364) and Mullaghcleevaun (2,615). The Liffey is now beside us and the road marks the boundary between the Downshire estate to our left and the Moore property to the right. In the nineteenth century the Downshire estate centred on Hillsborough in County Down was one of the largest estates in Ireland with some 120,00 acres.They married into Blessington which like Glenasmole was church land and built a town there. The mountain edges of the property was the refuge of the Gael who lived in the thatched clusters. Sometimes they planted trees, on this occasion to commemorate the coronation of Edward in the early nineteenth century as king of England, hence the name Coronation Plantation to denominate the Scot's pine to our left. This district and the gamekeeper's cottage on the south bank of the Liffey - the gamekeeper was a key figure in the landlord economy - was used in the film Dancing at Lughnasa to portray the Donegal landscape when the Brian Friel play was filmed. Our next site is again related to landlordism and in its origin it reveals the attitudes and beliefs of those who shaped Ireland's countryside in the nineteenth century.

The cottage at the Coronation Plantation

Ireland in that period had all the characteristics of an underdeveloped economy - massive unemployment, intermittent subsistence crises and a teeming rural population who had but a tenuous stake in the land. Some commentators believed the answer lay in the cultivation of waste of mountain and bog which amounted to almost one quarter of the land surface. The builder of Kippure House was one such optimist and he allied this with Protestant fundamentalism which believed in the work ethic and the biblical admonition to reclaim the wilderness. We don't know if this was an entirely new settlement; perhaps the site selected for the Big House was already occupied by a cluster. This house was one of the last built by landlords in County Wicklow. His house was on a raised platform above Liffey's waters and the surrounding land was drained, planted and divided into sheltered paddocks. Scottish settlers were introduced and their stone and slated houses were given names of biblical personages: Joseph, Jacob and Mary. All is now in ruins with only the small gate lodge and the walled garden of the original house surviving. Today the site of the house is being reshaped as a tourism project complete with accommodation and a conference centre.

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