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Introduction

The Curragh is guaranteed to make a deep impression on the first-time visitor with the great sweep of its plain stretching at certain points to what seems a boundless horizon. It is a landscape dominated by space to such an extent that it is easy to think that there is little of interest to discover among its scattered furze bushes and roaming sheep. A closer examination, however, tells a different story, for this 4,780-acre expanse bears all the marks of a rich and ancient history and has the magic spirit and soul of a place steeped in mythology. The horizon to the north is broken by a group of mature trees that stand sentry to a complex of red-brick buildings; their identity is revealed by the bold lettering of a nearby road sign: ‘Welcome to the Curragh, the Home of the Defence Forces’. The Curragh has had a strong connection with warfare and military musterings since the earliest times and also in ancient Irish lore, but it is the presence of this complex since the middle of the nineteenth century that has, more than anything else, established the military connection with the plain. The Curragh was a fitting location for a permanent army camp; its open space proved ideal for training (and, of course, for horse racing, for which it is world famous), and its geographical position allowed troops to be moved from there to any other part of the country in just a short space of time.

Twelve thousand years ago, at the end of the last ice age, the melting of the ice cap on the Wicklow Mountains sent glacial meltwaters cascading downwards and westwards, carrying with it deposits of outwash materials, primarily sand and gravel. These layers of sediment lodged themselves in a great fan-shaped plain that formed the basis for the distinctive features that characterize the Curragh today. Powerful post-glacial winds moulded the Curragh’s uppermost layer into its present smooth and wave-like shape. This exterior layer is still largely composed of the gravelly glacial deposits. Over time the outwash fan became almost devoid of nutrients due to a combination of rainfall leaching and grazing. The plain’s status as a commonage meant that these nutrients were not replaced by manure or fertilizers since no one grazier, or group of graziers, would undertake the expense. Remarkable for being the lowest lowland landscape of unenclosed grassland in Ireland, and with a type of grass more characteristic of acidic upland areas, the Curragh is of unique ecological importance, deserving of its Special Area of Conservation status because of its exceptionally abundant and interesting fungal flora. These mushrooms, some edible, spring up in large numbers during September and October, and are the most species-diverse by far in the whole of Ireland. Of forty-one species of waxcap mushrooms recorded for Ireland, thirty-three are from the Curragh (which has led to the suggestion that the oakleaf that appears on the shoulder flash insignia of military personnel from the Curragh should be replaced by a waxcap).

The richness of the Curragh’s past is revealed by the extraordinary wealth of archaeological remains; forty-four earthworks and barrows (or sites for such monuments) have been listed by the Office of Public Works, and the Curragh, in its entirety, has been designated as an archaeological complex. Much of interest is left from when it was an ancient assembly area, from Neolithic henges (ceremonial sites consisting of a circular area surrounded by a bank and a ditch) to entrenchments, ancient graves and clusters of embanked ring-ditches of a sacred nature. The largest and most prominent of the circular earthworks is the Gibbet Rath. Lying at the camp’s south-western corner, next to the Magazine, it was, most likely, an important place of residence in an earlier period. Its enclosure, surrounded by a bank and external ditch, is more than 100 metres in diameter and, at its centre, there is a smaller enclosure of a raised platform surrounded by two ditches. The Curragh also has one of the largest concentrations of barrow-type features in the country. On its north-eastern edge is the hill-fort of Knockaulin or Dún Ailinne, the legendary seat of the King of Leinster and a site of assembly during the Iron Age. Nearby, in Kildare town, which was the centre of the cult of St Bridget, there are early monastic remains, a testimony to the important role that the area played in the coming of Christianity to Ireland. Mythological clashes on the Curragh are first alluded to in the Annals of the Four Masters in ‘the year of the world 4608’ when Cobhthach Cael Breagh killed Laoghaire Lore whom later kings of Leinster regarded as the then King of Ireland. Conflicts over sovereignty were the cause of two further prehistoric battles which took place in the ‘years of the world 3727 and 2790’. In 777 AD, Ruaidhrí, son of Faelan and Brian, son of Muireadhach, faced each other on the plains, while sixty years later, in 840, Feidhlimidh, King of Munster, marched to the Curragh and made preparations there to encounter Niall, King of Tara, who had gathered his army further north. In 1234, Strongbow’s grandson, Richard Marshal, was fatally wounded in a clash on the Curragh between two bands of battling barons. The Confederate wars during the 1640s saw armed forces camp on the plain. In 1689, nine Jacobite regiments, comprising 4,500 men, gathered there. A year later, en route to their defeat at the Battle of the Boyne, other Jacobite forces were joined by a French force of 7,000 troops. Regular military use of the Curragh became the norm during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, all of which led to the understandable decision to build a permanent camp in the mid-nineteenth century in order to meet the particular military needs of the time.

At noon on Tuesday 16 May 1922, amid torrential rainfall, in a ceremony that would have been unthinkable to the camp’s resident in the first seventy years of its history, the Tricolour was raised over the Curragh, signalling the takeover by the Irish army from departing British troops. The ancient enemy had finally been defeated, and a new country was beginning to find its feet and meet the challenge of internal discord. It was a period in which the Curragh would play a vital role, as it has continued to do in different ways, helping to shape and preserve a healthy democracy as well as contributing significantly to the part that Ireland now plays on the world stage.