2015:033 - KILLINEY PARK HILL: Obelisk, Dublin

Monitoring was carried out at the Obelisk at Killiney Hill Park, County Dublin in January 2015. This was for the purposes of lighting the Obelisk using solar panels. A trench for the lighting duct was excavated across the south-eastern part of the hill and into the obelisk structure.

The stratigraphy was consistent throughout. 0.3m-0.4m of redeposited greyish-brown topsoil with 19th/20th-century glass, ferrous artefacts and cement mortar overlay a darker peaty sterile soil, which may have been a buried topsoil. This in turn overlay large granite boulders that appeared to be broken-up bedrock, and was similar in form to the exposed bedrock nearby.

The obelisk is a pointed monument set at the pinnicle of Killiney Hill, 156m above sea level. The site is not a Recorded Monument, nor is it in a zone of archaeological potential. Despite this, the summit of Killiney Hill is a dramatic point on the landscape and it is possible that the Obelisk monument replaced an earlier monument of some sort. Some people have theorised that the mound or small hillock on which the obelisk is perched may be the remains of a prehistoric cairn or tomb.

The obelisk was constructed at the summit of Killiney hill in 1741-2. A plaque on the monument records that ‘Last year being hard on the poor, the wall around these hills and this were erected by John Mapas Esq., June 1742.’ At the time Killiney Hill park formed part of the lands of Mount Mapas house, which has since been converted into the Killiney Castle Hotel.

In the later 18th century the Mapas estate was taken over by Henry Loftus. FE Ball (1902  Vol. 1, 59) records that Loftus renamed the hill ‘Loftus Hill’ and intended to carry out all manner of ambitious improvements to it. However, by the end of the 18th century he had purchased Rathfarnham Castle (the original Loftus residence) and transformed that into his primary seat, so sold Mount Mapas. An image of the obelisk from 1795 by F. Jukes (reproduced in Ball 1902 Vol. 1, 57) shows it surrounded by a tall circular wall, with a gated entrance to the south. The main access to the monument, curving from the left on the image, appears to be from the north.

In the 1840s the estate was owned by Robert Warren, who restored and added to the monuments on the hill, and who erected a second plaque on the obelisk marking the restoration. A view of the obelisk from 1841 (from Bartlett and Coyne’s Scenery and Antiquities of Ireland, 1841, reproduced from ‘Killiney Hill Final’, nd., UCD School of Archaeology, Heritage Council Reports, fig. 3) shows how much the obelisk has changed since 1795. The circular wall is gone, and there is an open-air staircase up the north side of the monument. The main access to the monument appears to have changed and is now from the south, similar to the primary approach today.

This slope was used as the primary access in 1795 when the obelisk was renovated and probably also functioned as the construction access for the monument’s construction in 1741-2, which suggests it had been much more gentle at this time. A Google Maps aerial image from c. 2007, taken during restoration works to the Obelisk, demonstrates that the south-eastern slope was again used as the primary access for groundworks and shows heavy disturbance across the same area as the 2015 duct excavation.

In conclusion, the archaeological work here demonstrated that, although the small hillock at the base of the Obelisk is suggestive of an earlier pre-existing monument, the extensive history of construction and alteration around the monument at the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century means that its shape is more likely to reflect early 19th-century aesthetics.

Reference
Ball, F. E. 1902 A History of the County Dublin: The people, parishes and antiquities from the earliest times to the close of the eighteenth century. 1995 Reprint.