GORDON D’ARCY
HISTORICAL RECORDS GIVE A TANTALISING GLIMPSE INTO THE RICHES OF IRELAND’S WOODED PAST, WRITES GORDON D’ARCY
T
he former wooded state of Ireland is well documented. Literary references, pollen analysis and dendrochronology have opened our eyes to this and to the major episodes of deforestation from the Neolithic to the Early Modern Period that have rendered Ireland a mere arboreal shadow of its former state. Since most of the factual archive has disappeared, with the trees, the history of former forests and even their whereabouts often remains only in local lore and place-names. Glenconkeyne (and adjacent Killetra) forest- once located in the Gaelic territory of Loughinsholin (now part of the county of Londonderry), in central Ulster- may be unique in the available reference material enabling us to imagine its former grandeur. This native forest, evidently the largest remaining in Ireland in the early 17th century was at least 8,000 hectares and may have been much larger since the ancient territory of Glenconkeyne is about 14,000 hectares. Contemporary references from English administrators concerned about its function as a retreat for ‘wolves and woodkernes’- animal and human threats to the Ulster Plantation- estimated its extent specifying that 160,000 oaks, ash and elms could be extracted without appreciably altering its extent. The geology and soils of the region and the range of extant habitats suggest the former arboreal structure. The dominant assemblage of oak (pedunculate and sessile), ash, elm and rowan on the slopes of the Sperrins and well-drained lowlands, giving way to birch, alder and willow on boggy areas, is the likely scenario. The evergreen component would have been ew, holly and ivy with Scots pine (specifically referenced by O’Sullivan Beare, circa 1625). Loughinsholin’s place-names are an invaluable source of information about the former forest: Cranny and Crannagh (crannaigh) are respectively ‘a wooded 22
A GREAT IRISH FOREST t a h w d an
t i f o e becam
A remnant patch of Irish rainforest, Co. Galway.
place’ and ‘a place abounding in trees’; Ballinderry (baile an doire) is the ‘townland of the oaks’ Calmore (coll mór) is ‘the great hazel’ [wood?]; Beagh is the place of birches; Rossure (ross iúir), ‘the wooded height of the yew’; Longfield (leamh choill) and Luney (leamhnaigh), respectively ‘elm wood’ and ‘place of elms’; Tirony (tir an omna) ‘land of the tree trunk’ is somewhat enigmatic, is this a reference to bog oak deposits or to a land rendered treeless? While a forest of these dimensions must have supported an extraordinarily rich ecosystem it is possible only to speculate on this. Noteworthy birds such as large raptors – buzzards, kites, eagles, goshawks etc.referenced elsewhere in medieval Irish literature- are obvious candidates. So too, woodpeckers and capercaillie, (‘cock of the wood’). In fact, there is a reference to ‘cock
of the wood’ in the 17th century Rawdon papers from the Antrim side of Lough Neagh, some 30 km from Glenconkeyne. As regards large animals, the place-names are again helpful: Derryhurk (doire thoirc) is ‘oakwood of the wild boar’; Drumanee (droim an fhia) is the ridge of the [red?] deer. Was it the abundance of such ‘huntable’ animals that prompted the English attorney general, Sir John Davies, to recommend Glenconkeyne as a royal hunting preserve? The tradition of ‘the last wolf in Ireland’ is particularly strong in Loughinsholin with reports of wolves lingering there until the 1760’s. However, the wolf (and the wildcat?) may have been hunted out before that since neither are mentioned in ‘The Experienced Huntsman’ (Arthur Stringer,1714), from the Antrim side of Lough Neagh. A great deal of what we know about the
Irish Wildlife Winter ‘21
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