A GREAT IRISH FOREST

HISTORICAL RECORDS GIVE A TANTALISING GLIMPSE INTO THE RICHES OF IRELAND’S WOODED PAST, WRITES GORDON D’ARCY

The 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 o en 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. is 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. e geology and soils of the region and the range of extant habitats suggest the former arboreal structure. e 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. e evergreen component would have been ew, holly and ivy with Scots pine (speci cally 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

A GREAT IRISH

FOREST and what became of it

 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’; Long eld (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 ia) 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? e 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 ‘ e Experienced Huntsman’ (Arthur Stringer,1714), from the Antrim side of Lough Neagh.

A great deal of what we know about the

destruction of Glenconkeyne forest comes from the writings and correspondence of Sir omas Phillips, servitor and military superintendent for the Ulster Plantation. While overseeing the implementation of the ‘Orders and Conditions’ of the Plantation which speci ed the allocation of 50,000 oaks, 100,000 ashes and 10,000 elms from Glenconkeyne to the ‘undertakers’, Phillips was extracting massive quantities of timber for his own purposes. However, when he discovered that the newly appointed mayors of Londonderry and Coleraine were engaged in the illicit manufacture of huge quantities of pipe staves for barrels from the forest, he was outraged. His submission to the Star Chamber in London is a meticulous record of the ‘despoliation’- ‘At the coming of the Londoners in 1610, [the London Guilds,

 Map 2, Woodland 1600 Mc Cracken 1971

who, as an enticement, were permitted to take timber from the forest] the woods were very thick, but by the 1630’s a man might see a mile through them…’ e establishment of a number of timberhungry ironworks during and a er this period accelerated the demise of the forest. Sir William Petty’s map undertaken in the 1650’s shows the barony of Loughinsholin almost devoid of trees. By 1803 an agent of the Irish Society reported that ‘the county of Londonderry is perhaps the worst wooded county in the king’s dominions.’

A tour of the region today reveals that, apart from scattered mature trees in the hedgerows and blocks of commercial forestry on the slopes of the Sperrins, the landscape reveals no clue of the vastness of the former forest. [As an encouraging sign, however, recent cross-community tree planting initiatives such as the ‘Forest of Coleraine’ are seeking to redress the region’s arboreal paucity].

One may wonder what is to be gained by reaching back into history in the manner of this article given that, thankfully, we live in more enlightened times. However, egregious, unfettered exploitation continuing in many parts of the world and even in Ireland, extends to other natural resources besides timber. In addition, it provides us with a tantalising insight into the former ecological richness of a great Irish forest prior to the radical change wrought by the industrial revolution.

For further reading: Glenconkeyne: How Ireland’s native woodland became the timber yard of the Plantation of Ulster, in New Hibernia Review, vol.25, no.2, 2021.