July 2016
CLASSICAL ASSOCIATION OF IRELAND
CAI DUBLIN Outing to south Wicklow On a bright Saturday morning, May 28, an excited group of prospective antiquarians left Belfield at 9am for the delights of Wicklow, armed with maps and brochures giving details of towns and villages along the route. At 11.30 we arrived at Coollattin (also spelled Coolattin, the name means ‘secluded place of the gorse’), where we were treated to coffee and scones at the golf club restaurant. We then proceeded to Coollattin House down an avenue of flaming rhododendrons – purple, pink and white. There we were entertained by Gerry Cassidy, who not only showed us the house but gave us a lively account of the Fitzwilliam family. Lord Fitzwilliam owned one-fifth of County Wicklow in the nineteenth century. His ancestor, Wentworth (known as ‘thorough’) had come from England to get money for his master and was granted land in Wicklow and Kildare. He was executed some years before his master suffered the same fate. However, the family survived, making judicious marriages and having sons – whether legitimate or not is hard to say! The Fitzwilliams were very good to their 20,000 tenants. During the Great Famine of the 1840s the then Lord Fitzwilliam called a meeting. He asked those who wanted to go to Canada to put up their hands and then provided them with good boats and money. Gerry told us that the less well-off tenants were excused their rent – including his own family. They were very considerate employers: this was shown by the beautiful village of Shillelagh owned by the family, where they built substantial stone houses for their employees and laid out the village on an English model. The house itself is enormous. It was built in the early nineteenth century, replacing a Georgian house which was burnt down during the 1798 rebellion. It was only used occasionally by the family who lived most of the time on their English estates. However, the whole area was noted for its oak forests which were used for the roofs of many fine English buildings. There is a grove of primeval oak trees on the estate. When that was sold to a developer, he decided to cut down the trees. The locals protested, to no avail: the trees were marked for
Inside Coollattin House. (Photos by Isabella Bolger)
cutting. During the night, the marks disappeared. The developer gave up. The land now belongs to the Coollattin Golf Club, which is preserving the forests. Having surveyed the house, we went back to the golf club for a delicious lunch and then travelled on to Aghowle, a beautiful church. The name comes from the Irish Achadh Abhaill, ‘Apple field’, indicating the fertility of the land. The church is near Kilkenna, off the main Shillelagh to Tullow road. It was originally a monastery, founded by Saint Finian of Clonard in the sixth century. The Annals of the Four Masters mentions two tenth-century abbots and the Yellow Book of Lecan gives an account of its foundation. The church on the site is early twelfth century and is built of Wicklow granite which glitters in the sunlight. There are cut stone windows and a Romanesque doorway on the inside. Part of the building was cut off to provide a mausoleum for a local landlord named Nixon. John O’Donovan wrote about the church in the notes provided with the first Ordnance Survey in 1838: “I have spent eight years looking for this church!” Nearby is an undecorated 2.8metre high Celtic Cross of the tenth century and beside it a baptismal font: the locals say that the water from this cures headaches (photo on the front page of this Newsletter). We then went across the road to an ancient fortress called Rathgall (‘the bright fort’, from the quartz crystals in the granite of the innermost wall). The enclosure is surrounded by four walls: three of stone covered by earth dating from the sixth century, and the 11