Sample Field Trip #1

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The Hellfire Club, that squat building which we saw from Tallaght village, is just a short, sharp walk upslope. There is much folklore about this place - tales of black dogs, devil worship, headless coachmen traversing dark roads at night - but essentially it is an eighteenth century hunting lodge built by Speaker Connolly from Castletown House in Celbridge and based on a 1,000 acre deerpark which encircled the hill. The folklore is important as it connects this place to many other sites throughout Ireland where paranormal activities are regarded as a consequence of interference with the sacred burial chambers of the dead. In this instance it is believed that Connolly robbed the stones of a prehistoric cairn on the hilltop.

If the weather systems are favourable we have a magnificent birds-eye view of the city and its suburbs from the vantage point of Killakee. From here we can detect the reasons why this site was selected by Irish, Dane, Anglo-Norman and New English as their central place: Riverine, sea-based, flat agricultural land, water for domestic and industrial use, harbour, facing imperial Britain to the east, Ireland's granary and stockyard to the west and northwards. We can also understand why the Wright proposals for the expansion of the city in the 1960s focused on the western approaches - flat open country amenable to civil engineering schemes and regulation.

We are now turning our backs on the city but its influence will persist. The road we are traversing is relatively new, about two hundred years old, and it was driven through the spine of the Wicklows not so much to facilitate trade as to move military men and equipment into the hearthland of the United Irishmen's country. In the summer war of 1798 the Wexford-Wicklow alliance came uncomfortably close to the centre of power and the generals, Holt and O'Dwyer, used the wild terrain of the mountains to harass the army. The military road was driven through this inhospitable landscape becoming a permanent feature of its geography. At intervals along the route, usually at valley heads such as at Glencree, Glenmalure and Aughavannagh, barracks were constructed in much the same way as the borderlands of South Armagh are fortified today.