A Place in-between : Castlemartyr/Killeagh and the Bronze Age[Not edited]

Given that there was Bronze Age mining activity and presum-ably settlement in the South West coastal area of Ireland i.e. connected to Mount Gabriel (Cnoc Osta so similar in sound to Greek word Oestymnides referring to western/ Atlantic places) on the Mizen Peninsula (Cork) the most southerly point in Ire-land, that there are some suggestions of Greek activity near Wexford on the eastern edge of Ireland’s southern shoreline, a long Copper coast on the Waterford seafront in-between and the site of a major copper mining industry in the mid 19th cen-tury AD, was there anything else relating to the Bronze Age close to the coastline between Waterford and West Cork at a time when Cork Harbour did not exist?

One interesting, hypothetical, answer to this long tailed ques-tion is that Pilmore Harbour immediately west of Youghal may have been a place of significant activity during the Bronze Age and subsequently. Pil ( the same as pwl or poll in Welsh trans-lates as harbour and ‘more’ is the gaelic word mór meaning big or large. Pilmore therefore means ‘large harbour’. However to-day and perhaps for the a considerable period, perhaps also impacted by tsunamis such as that in 1755 AD and that circa 822 AD, it is now to a large extent both sand locked and silted up. The river which flows in to it is, in English called the Wom-anagh. In Gaelic the river name is the Uaimneach which can mean/refer to in Gaelic the activities of welding or embroider-ing. The Uaimneach is a river which emerges from underground in what is a limestone region in the Cloyne district; a place noted among speleologists for its natural caves. The Uaim-neach flows in a west to east direction and finally flows south to join the sea at Pilmore.

At the junction of the river and the harbour there is an early, circular Anglo-Norman keep which is known as Inchiquin castle. Folklore related that it was the residence of the Old Countess of Desmond (South Munster) and that she died at an advanced age having climbed an appletree there and fallen. Was the cas-tle placed there to control trade inland along the Uaimneach

and the hinterlands of its tributaries? It has two main tribu-taries located on its northern side which flow from the ridge landscape beyond, one through the the village of Castlemartyr and the other through the village of Killeagh. Both villages are on the main Cork to Youghal road. The Kilta river, meaning Cill Teach house of the cell (?), flows through Castlemartyr and the Dissour (Deisiúir meaning/referring, among several options, a ‘vassalate’ community) flows through Killeagh. Along the banks of the Uaimneach a Bronze Age sword was discovered in 1883 which is now in the National Museum of Ireland and by Cast-lerichard a Bronze Age urn was discovered.

Castlemartyr’s castle and demesne were created on the lands of Ballyoughtera (Baile Uachtarach meaning upper (uachtarach) homeplace or ville, but also understood by some antiquarians to have referred to, or imply homeplace of the braziers/furnaces; in the context of known iron - and perhaps copper working - at some point in time). I have therefore ac-cepted, wrongly or rightly, that ‘homeplace of the furnaces’ may have been an earlier name for Ballyoughtera. The en-larged and ruined medieval church, once that of a township, is located close by and close to the junction of the Kilta/Kilty (Cill Teach?) with the Uaimneach (Womanagh) rivers. Its enclosing bank and ditch (termon) survives.

The 18th century antiquarian Charles Smith MD in his topo-graphical history of Cork (1750) recorded a tradition that iron was once worked in the locality and also a vague memory that copper working had also occurred at some time in the past. The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland for 1846 also noted a tradi-tion relating to metalworking at Castlemartyr as follows

Dr. Smith, speaking of Castlemartyr, says “ it was an-ciently called Leper’s-town, from a leper-house belong-ing to an adjacent place called Ballyouteragh, which was a village of some note; and there is a tradition of its hav-ing been remarkable for a copper manufactory, - Bally-outeragh literally signifying, ‘a town of braziers;’ yet there is no copper-ore near this place, but iron-mines are almost everywhere round it. The old church is in ruins and the site thereof removed to Castlemartyr…”

The ruins of the old i.e. medieval, church building - and its en-closure - survive today at Castlemartyr Wood. Was this me-dieval church built on the site of an earlier cell or oratory enclo-sure?

Was there a copper source somewhere nearby or was copper ore transported from a distance via the sea, the Uaimneach via Pilmore Harbour and its tributary the Kilta, to Ballyoughtera? Did ore come from the Cork coastline or from Waterford’s Cop-per coast? Did phases of such activity take place at different, unconnected, points in time both historic and pre-historic; peo-ple returning to or rediscovering the same copper source at differing points in time? Did brass working, some evidence for which comes from as early as Roman Britain, take place in con-nection with the braziers?

Did iron working replace copper working? Was iron working tak-ing place in the early 19th century there as noted in the Parlia-mentary Gazetteer above? Was it taking place in the 18th cen-tury and for several centuries prior to that during those cen-turies when the great Cloyne monastic house - both in its pre and post 12th century forms - and its large area of surrounding demesne land once existed? Was there a tradition of metal-working in bronze or brass - and its craft knowledge - going back even further at this place, going back to a community of copper metalworkers of the Bronze Age, a time of overlapping with the early La Tene Iron Age? If so was it an economically successful settlement adjacent to the burial tombs of its lead-ers?

Archaeological investigations of copper mining in West Cork (Mount Gabriel and other sites) have produced radio carbon dating going back to the beginnings of the 2nd millennium BC. Was copper still being worked there as late as the 2nd century BC? Was it being worked elsewhere, such as the Copper Coast of Waterford, along the coastline of South Munster?

In the course of the Archaeological Survey of County Cork which took place between 1990 and 2000, a number of, poten-

tially, Bronze Age burial mounds were recorded on the town-lands of Ballindinis, Ballyvourisheen and Knockane which lie be-side the Cork/Youghal main road i.e. between Castlemartyr and Killeagh villages. As a result the suggestion has been made that there was a Bronze Age settlement close by Castlemartyr and Ballyoughtera the place of the braziers/furnaces and that these mounds represent the cemetery of that settlement. Ballindins along with Castlerichard and Knockane are all within the civil parish area of Ightermurragh; tombs from Ballindinis, an urn from Castlerichard and a burial with artefacts from Knockane. Also in Ightermurragh lies Páirc na hAidhle townland one translation for which may be the park of the ‘mailed war-rior’ or ‘armour rack’ or a cooper’s adze i.e. aidhle. Does the ‘armour rack or mailed warrior’, if the actual name, suggest medieval knights or members of the warrior class of more an-cient times?

There is a suggestion that Anglo-Norman iron working took place in the Ballyoughtera locality. If so was it connected with Castlemartyr castle or with the large monastery at Cloyne which is the next parish on the west side of Ballyoughtera? Was Kilmountain above Castlemartyr a woodland (Coille and not Cill) which produced wood for charcoal to fuel braziers in the days of Robert de la Montayn, or in the days of (Saint?) Ultáin’s caher enclosure by Caherultan? Was Caherultan a hermitage dependency of Cloyne monastery? Was Balloughtera the town of Kilmountayn?

Ightermurragh parish is located on the eastern side of Bally-oughtera parish and bordering their southern boundaries lie the small parishes of Bohillane and Garryvoe. Bohillane could de-rive from bothán meaning huts or hovels or alternatively it could be a corruption of bothár. In Ballyoughtera the townland names Gortstoke (Gort Stóc) may refer to the activity of stok-ing a fire (Dinneen) attached to a gort piece of land. Ightermur-ragh parish has a long tail piece on its south east side which trails off to the sea between Garryvoe and Kilmacdonagh parishes.

In the early years of the 19th century circa 1805 at Knockane (Cnoc Áine meaning Áine’s hillock or alternatively the small

hillock) townland a man was quarrying in the locality of the mounds and discovered a burial chamber, a rock cave. Some confusion arose among Cork antiquarians regarding the loca-tion of the site and some came to the conclusion that it was sit-uated not at Knockane but at Carrig-a-Crump (the rock of Crom the bent-back demi-god of the harvest whose consort was Áine, both important figures of the harvest festival of Lugh-nasa). Knockane (Cnoc Áine) the find spot of the burial is lo-cated to the north east of Cloyne while Carrigacrump is located directly west of Cloyne beside Lurrig townland at Barrykilla ridge where a monolith to Lugh the sun god once existed and gold objects were once discovered.

Carrig-a-Crump is an ancient limestone quarry close to the marshland of Rostellan lake and abutting Ballinvoher (Baile an Bóthar) the homeplace of the road which connected to Lugh’s Way (Lugh Slí meaning Lugh’s way or path to the seashore at Ballybrannigan beach).

The quarry produced a ‘dove marble’, a type of building mate-rial which interestingly was also used to a small extent in the construction of buildings in Roman Britannia. It may be pre-sumed that the Roman navy and merchant fleets out of Britan-nia were familiar with the Irish coastline as mentioned by Taci-tus circa 100 AD. Presumably they were trading as well as seeking or prospecting for local resources to avail of. A hoard of Roman coins dating from 278 - 337 AD ( of Emperors Claudius Gothicus, Constantine Chlorus and Constantine the Great) were discovered at Cuskinny Marsh on Cobh Island’s south shoreline nearby at the end of the 19th century; and close to Rostellan Lake overlooked by Barrykilla ridge beside which the ‘Veynus’ (from Latin Venio?) river once flowed through a curragh plain to the sea. Some scholars still see these as an 18th or 19th cen-tury fake deposit, while other believe that they are from a gen-uine 3rd to 4th century deposition of the hoard.

The correct site i.e. Knockane, of the discovery of the burial now appears to be well established, as demonstrated by the re-search of Dr. Mary Cahill of the National Museum of Ireland (Cahill 2006, 329-332) in a paper about John Windele’s ‘golden

legacy’. John Windele was a very active 19th century Cork city antiquarian scholar and collector.

The burial consisted of a human skeleton ‘partly shrouded in a winding sheet of corrugated and embossed plates of pure gold connected by bits of wire; the quarry worker also found some amber beads’. Other reports describe a headdress of some kind said to be like a bishop’s mitre and suggest that the amber beads were a necklace. Whatever the price details at the time of discovery this was certainly a person of high status.

Unfortunately, the gold plates and other items were removed from the site and the gold, a suggested half a coal scuttle full, was melted down by either a Youghal or Cork city jeweller if such information is accurate. A single gold plate survives and is in the National Museum of Ireland.

Given that rivers and the sea lanes were the principal route-ways and communication paths in prehistoric and early historic times, what relationship wold Knockane, its surrounding mounds and a possible Bronze Age settlement have had with braziers/furnaces at Ballyoughtera, with the Uaimneach (Wom-anagh) River and with a big harbour at Pilmore? Brass is an al-loy of lead and copper.

An early bishop of Cloyne named Riain was said to have re-marked that Cloyne was the burial place of some of the ‘no-blest bloods of Ireland’. By which he meant what? That the burial place was close to the monastery precincts or elsewhere on its vast demesne lands? That the monastery had been founded in proximity to a pagan Iron Age festival site at Barrykilla, that it was founded to the west of a Bronze Age burial place by Castlemartyr? Such asso-ciations had critical and strategic relevance for early Irish Chris-tianity and its efforts to syncretise with the customs of local pa-gan communities and their leaders. The people of this locality were the Uí Mochaille (Imokilly). It was the king of the Uí Mochaille who invited Colmán then a monk at Donoughmore monastery above the River Lee to come and found a monastery on his tribe lands.

Once his monastery was built Colmán metaphorically leapt from the round tower and smashed his knees into the great monolith of Lugh at Barrykilla and brought it to the ground. He Christianised heathendom. As the site of an aonach festival did the festival activities then move to the foot of the ridge and be-come Kilteskin medieval church, hermitage, spital and holy well? This festival was a big event which lasted up to the mid 19th century when described by the local parish priest, and an-tiquarian author, Rev. Canon Richard Smiddy of Aghada. Tomas Crofton Croker (of Cork city and a famous collector of stories, fairy tales, melodies and antiquities information) also believed that these festivals, as observed in his time ( i.e. early to mid 19th century) were pagan in origin. If so was Christianity just a thin veil, to an extent, over practices very ancient and still vi-brant?

Local folklore relates that Cloyne monastery was founded at the cross roads of four great roads of ancient Ireland. Was one of these roads that which lead south by Ballinvoher and Lugfree townlands to the promontory fort at Ballyshane and Ballybranigan beach beside it? At the eastern end of Balyy-branigan beach lies Ballycroneen beach and it is there that folklore relates that the sea god Mananánn the Celtic sea god rose up and released three cows upon the land creating three roads (bothárs), each going in a different direction according to colour (brown, black and white or speckled).

Was the suggested Bronze Age settlement between Castlemar-tyr and Killeagh connected to the festival at Barrykilla and Lugh worshippers? Lugh appears to be the western European Celtic sun god to whom some of the great settlements of Celtic Eu-rope were dedicated. Does his presence at Barrykilla and the aonach there represent Iron Age Imokilly? Did Pilmore, the Uaimneach river and the burial mounds by Knockane represent Bronze Age Imokilly?

Was the person buried in the cave at Knockane someone of high status either in Ireland or abroad? Was the person a visitor from another land overseas? Was the person of royal blood wearing a crown and a gold embroidered cloak used as a wind-

ing sheet to cover the body? Was the burial a rushed operation there being no time to carry the body back to its place of origin before decay set in, and a crude quarry cave being located to act as a makeshift tomb? Why would Baltic amber beads be present e.g. as a necklace? Was the person Gaelic and local or a visitor from Roman Britannia or further afield? Was the per-son male or female? Was the person an early bishop of Cloyne? Or was the person someone from whom the status of the burial ground would emerge, a ‘noblest blood’?

If ore was being mined and smelted for export, was it being traded to Greek foreigners and Persians arriving annually at festival fairs with ‘gold and fine raiments’ (clothing) to trade? Did they pay in coins of Macedon and Persia for bulk shipments to be made to their homelands through the Mediterranean Sea via the Pillars of Hercules until western trade i.e. in the Atlantic, was controlled by the Carthaginians and others of the Mediter-ranean sea were blockaded out?

Did the ore make the local Irish mining communities, and their leaders, rich in material wealth for their time? Did some their settlements, their acquisition of lands and seascapes contain-ing the ore deposits and the memory of them dissolve in to the realm of myth; become accounts of ‘invasions’ and scenes of great battles for control in the Lebor Gabhála Érenn i.e. the book of the taking of Ireland, the Book of Invasions? Did some of these prospectors, going back to the 6th century (BC) Him-ilco of Carthage, follow the main rivers inland from coastlines of copper in search of more ore? Was copper their gold? Did they clear and divide up (Dido style) the land, as parcels for agricul-ture to support the mining and smelting communities? Did they settle and did they create their burial ground close by; their leaders and persons of wealth having their burial mounds placed at seascapes and on high places to show their ancestral dominance of their emerging tribeland?

If such people used underground space for habitations and storage of goods or weapons does evidence of this survive? What of the Wexford souterrain said to have had a cache of bronze spearheads in it? If evidence has survived and if its dat-ing is of the period 400 to 100 BC then would that mean that

some of the subterranean architectural forms within the souter-rain record for South Munster are of the same dating as some of the Breton and Scottish souterrains forms? Is this not the time period of the coins of Macedon found on Ireland’s south west coast i.e. coins of Philip II and his son Alexander the Great, as well as Persian (Syrian) coins - coins of those Persians the Greeks were attempting to repel from their lands? Is this not the time phase of the Bronze Age axeheads from the poll faoi talamh (souterrain) discovered at Aghadown civil parish (Paddock townland) by the Mizen Peninsula (Skibereen) in West Cork? Is this time period not an overlap with the time period for the European La Téne Iron Age in Ireland? Would some of the communities of miners have been comfortable living, with fami-lies, in tunnelled underground spaces?

Did all of this activity end circa 100 BC, no further subter-ranean activity taking place until the arrival of the Milesians and early/paleo Christianity and the beginnings of monastic Ire-land? Was it a South Munster landscape of both Bronze Age and Iron Age communities each in their respective and topo-graphically defined tribeland; defined by rivers, bogs, dense oak forests, with some encircled and defined by towering mountain ranges?

It is unfortunate that no details or survey information exists on record for either the above Aghadown (Paddock) souterrain or the Wexford souterrain. As a consequence we do not know what architectural forms these souterrains had and therefore what souterrain classes they belonged to. This emphasises the importance of proper recording of souterrain discoveries, espe-cially those such as the above which produce metal artefacts e.g. weapons or tools.

References:Cahill, Mary (2006) John Windele’s golden legacy - prehistoric and later gold ornaments from Co. Cork and Waterford. Pro-ceeding of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. 106C, 329-332.

Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland 1846. Published A. Fullarton and Co., Dublin.

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