Climbing for Pleasure in Ireland

 Poets such as Brian Merriman or Mary Tighe may have mentioned their enjoyment of Irish mountains in their writing but it seems that the earliest account of climbing or hiking in the Irish mountains was published in 1849. 

A Waterford man, a member of the prominent Mackesy family, wrote about 'The Comeragh Mountains, their lakes and legends'.   This was an account of a multi-day hike/climb in the Comeraghs in which he describes his route, the terrain and the various lakes and the coums (cwms) and the folklore and legends attached to them.

A brief extract gives a flavour of the account:

Coumshingaun - Winter

We have reached the foot of the mountain under Coumshingaun ; high above, you see a dark, circular, hollow - that is our goal - the Coum, in which lies the lake, and it seems to you much nearer now than you will find it to be in reality. 

Let us ascend. Aye, it is very steep, and the day is bright and hot ; but take it quietly—you have only a two-mile walk before you. For a part of the way the grass is pleasant, and we can go straight onwards. But ever as we climb, the heath and ling become tougher and taller, the grass thinner, the stones more numerous, the dried-up channels of the winter floods more deep and frequent ; so that we can no longer hold a direct course, but must deviate into many a zig-zag; and still, as we surmount each swelling knoll, the dark Coum above seems to recede, and the way to lengthen before us. 

Now the ground shelves downwards ; we descend amid coarse herbage, heath, and stones, and now we are in the actual Coum, this deep, stern, and solitary hollow! and there lies the lake, that dark, oval tarn, embosomed in cliffs; but such cliffs! so steep, so gigantic, so magnificent—could we ever attempt to describe them!.......

Mahon Falls

But though Crotty might have had his out-offices here for his live stock, yet for his own proper residence he honoured with his preference a cavern near a lake, called after him," Crotty's Lake," about a mile north from this place. ......

And now the summary of what we have seen is, that of all the lakes and hollows, Coumshingaun is the grandest, Coumfea the mildest, Stillogue More the loveliest, Coumgorra the most savage. The mountains are seen to most advantage when the heath is in full bloom, and after a continuance of dry weather: late in the year they look bare, sombre, and dreary; and after rain the deep moss is so soaked, that you feel as if treading on supersaturated sponges; besides, the frequent mists, the treacherous bogs, and suddenly-swelling torrents, render the excursion dangerous after the commencement of autumn.

Crotty's Lake

 But if advantage be taken of bright, warm days, late in August, or early in September, no real lover of nature will return disappointed from a ramble in the Commeragh Mountains.

Iska Solas

A number of things are to be noted in the account; 

first of all the date of publication - 1849;

and also the writer is addressing an audience  of like minded people who apparently are accustomed to such activity.

(Of course the images were not part of the original article).

Mary Burtchaell, a resident of Graiguenamanagh, kept a diary in which she recorded a number of walks and hikes including, on two occasions, a climb of Brandon Hill. (16th Aug 1845 & 9th Sep 1850.)  Even if this is of no great mountaineering significance it does indicate that such people were enjoying these activities at this time. (NLI Ms 7800-11).

John Palliser, a landlord whose property included large swathes of the Comeragh Mountains is known to have hunted and hiked in those hills and he plays a greater role in this story - more to follow.

Are there similar accounts of such activities from other parts of the country?

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Mapping of Ireland

Recorded mountains
 to 1700

 The mountains of Ireland appeared and were named on maps of the island as early as 1572.

John de Courcy has detailed the summits that appear on maps up to 1700.

(see Mountaineering Ireland. IMEHS Journal, Vol 2, 2005)

Charles Vallencey produced a military survey
of parts of the island around 1780.

Various land owners produced estate maps of their property and it was William Edgeworth, who had been involved in the Bogs Commission survey, that produced a trigonometrical survey of Co Longford and part of Roscommon. With him, 'native Irish cartography attained a new high level'.  Alexander Nimmo, for the same survey, produced a comprehensive map of the Kerry region in 1811.

                    

                                                      

See Finnian O Cionnaith Land Surveying in Ireland 1690-1830  for details of earlier surveyors.

      

In 1824 the six-inch Ordnance Survey mapping of Ireland was begun under Thomas Colby. As a consequence the surveyors were the first group to systematically get to all the significant mountain summits on the island. 

Principal triangulation
with dates.

 There is hardly a prominent peak that does not bear evidence of this in the ubiquitous 'trig pillars' that are familiar to hikers and are the result of 'retriangulation' carried out in the 1950s and '60s. 

Ireland was the first country to be completely mapped at a scale of  6 inches to a mile.

Much discussion  took place as to the merits of contour lines or hachuring to represent altitude and slope and it was not until about 1890 that the complete hill edition was produced.

A full account of the operation and proceedings of the OS in 19th Century Ireland is given by 

JH Andrews in  A Paper Landscape.

Thomas Colby was the director of the OS in Ireland  and John O' Donovan played 

John O'Donovan

an important role in the toponymical aspects of the survey.  'The OS made a crucial contribution to scholarship. Its work on antiquities, the Irish language and literature was of immense importance because it studied...sources (many for the first time) using the new scientific methodologies of contemporary European scholarship.'  G.M Doherty The Irish Ordnance Survey

Of course, the surveyors climbed the mountains for professional reasons rather than for recreation.  However, their activities may have had an influence on a generation of people that became interested in the activity of surveying, some of whom carried this interest abroad to Europe and North America and carried out surveys of their own in these places.  Among such people were John Palliser, Anthony Adams Reilly, Edward Oliver Wheeler and there will be more about these to follow.

A fascinating 'biography of the Ordnance Survey' is Map of a Nation by Rachel Hewitt (Granta, 2010)

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