About Dalkey Castle

dalkey history

Now well known for its stunning scenic surroundings on ‘Ireland’s Amalfi Coast’, the town of Dalkey near Dublin City Centre, Ireland, has an ancient, rich and varied history. It rose to prominence through great surges of activity and rested as a sleepy fishing village in the intervening times.

The name Dalkey comes from the Old Irish Name for Dalkey Island, ‘Deilg Inis’ which means ‘Thorn Island’. This was later changed to Deilg–ei by the Vikings, Dalk-ei by the Normans and later anglicised to Dalkey.

Some artefacts date inhabitation of Dalkey Island to over 6,000 years ago (4,500 B.C.), older than Stonehenge and the Great Pyramids of Giza. A skull, filled with periwinkle shells, was found during an excavation in the 1960’s which was dated to 2,500 B.C. The earliest written record of Dalkey is from the ‘Annals of the Four Masters‘ which refer to a time in 1699 B.C. when Heremon and Heber assumed joint sovereignty of Ireland and Dun Deilginis (the fort of thorn island) was built.

In the 5th and 6th centuries, the most northern point of Dalkey Island was indeed the home of a strategic fort. In archaeological digs of the ruins, bronze pins, glassware and wine jugs from all over the world were found. Some were imported from as far away as Greece, North Africa and the Dalmatian coast, suggesting Dalkey was always a busy trading port.

Dalkey initially grew as a small village around the Early Christian Church of the virgin saint, St Begnet around the 7th Century, a resting point as pilgrims made their way to the monastic site at Glendalough. A holy well and church ruins associated with St. Begnet can be found on Dalkey Island. Here at Dalkey Castle & Heritage Centre, our 10th Century granite Church ruins are thought to have replaced an earlier 7th Century wooden church on the site.

The Vikings arrived in longboats to Dublin in 795 AD and settled from 841 AD onwards. During their reign Dublin became the most important town in Ireland as well as a hub for the western Viking expansion and trade. It is in fact, one of the best known Viking settlements.

Dalkey’s prominence in the world markets continued throughout the time thanks to boats struggling to anchor in the shallow waters of the River Liffey in Dublin. Dalkey was the easier port and trade thrived. During this time, Dalkey Island also had a dark history as the holding place for Viking slaves and prisoners. A hoard of Viking coins found in Victorian times in Castle Street, Dalkey have the head of King Edgar who ruled from 959-975 A.D. They are now in the British Museum.

With the defeat of the Vikings at the Battle of Clontarf in 1014, Dalkey was a sleepy village again comprising some cabins, a few inns, burgages and gardens. It awoke once more with the Norman invasion of Ireland which took place during the late 12th century.

This growth in trade was again influenced by the anchorage provided for large Norman ships in Dalkey Sound. From the mid-1300s to the late 1500s, large Norman ships could not access Dublin, as the river Liffey was silted up. They could however anchor safely in the deep waters of Dalkey Sound.

In 1358, the Dublin Merchants succeeded in an application to the Crown to use the deep and sheltered waters of Dalkey Sound to off- load goods bound for Dublin. The ships were lightened and the goods were either brought by road to store houses in Dalkey or went by shell boat into Ringsend.

With all that trade, the town was often subject to marauding attack by the riotous O’Byrne and O’Toole clans from deep within Wicklow, so in 1390, Seven defensive Medieval Castles were built in Dalkey by the merchants to protect the goods before transportation to Dublin.

Eventually, Dalkey acquired the dubious renown of being a hub for smuggling, a town of Pillaging Pirates! In fact, things got so serious that a water bailiff was commissioned for the area to ensure that only the right cargo was being removed from the ships and that the right taxes were paid. Underground tunnels exist between Dalkey Island and mainland Dalkey, although these days they are blocked up to prevent wayward explorers from getting hurt, lest they cave in!

In 1482, Dalkey was granted a licence to hold a weekly market on Tuesdays, possibly to regularise an existing market. There was an Annual Fair on the feast of St Begnet on 12^th November. The shopkeepers in the town had to close their shops and set up stalls outside the town and pay a tax to the Archbishop of Dublin who used this money for the upkeep of the walls and pathways. This was referred to as murage and pavage.

As Dublin port was dredged and developed, through the later 1500 and 1600s, the town of Dalkey became unimportant to the merchants who had so needed it and the town slipped into decline. By 1630, St Begnet’s Church here was reported to be abandoned and roofless. Dalkey reverted to a sleepy fishing village.

During the Napoleonic Wars, 26 Martello towers were built along the coastline for defence against a possible French invasion. One of these towers can be seen on Dalkey Island, the other one nearby is in Sandycove, and now houses the James Joyce Museum. We run Bloomsday Events, Guided Literary Walks and Luxury Experiences related to James Joyce at Dalkey Castle.

November 19^th 1807 was a tragic day in the area’s history. Several ships left Dublin carrying troops bound for the Napoleonic Wars. The next day, two ships, The Rochdale and the HMS Prince of Wales, having been caught in gale force winds and heavy snow, were lost. The bodies were washed up for weeks afterwards along the shore. A number are buried here in St Begnet’s Graveyard. The loss of almost all of the four hundred lives on board was a catalyst for the building of the Dun Laoghaire harbour, which began in 1817.

This led to Dalkey’s next rise to prominence with the excavation of granite in Dalkey Quarry around that time. The coming of a new invention, the Dalkey Atmospheric railway in 1844, and a successful quarry which had provided the stone for Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire) pier, meant good fortune for the people of Dalkey. The railway used part of the quarry industrial tramway (see if you can spot the old tramyard in town). The arrival of the railway also meant that people could now work in Dublin City but live in larger homes out on the coast and take in the clean sea air and stunning scenic views.

The Dalkey Gold Rush began in 1833 when Miss Etty Scott, a miner’s daughter, dreamt that a horde of Viking gold was buried under Dalkey Hill towards Coliemore Harbour. According to Gaskin’s Irish Varieties of 1869, Etty told her family and friends, “Wait with patience…for the secreted treasure of the Dane will be surely found if you hearken to my voice”.

The miners living on the Commons of Dalkey all rushed to stake claims and this led to the establishment of a Dalkey Goldmining Society. It all ended in tears when some prankster Trinity College medical students left a bag of fluorescently painted cats to be discovered and no gold was found.

There was a happy ending for the Dalkey miners however. A case around the same time involving squatters on Ballymore Eustace held that they were entitled to ownership of the land occupied by them for the past twenty or so years. They sold their plots (on which most of the big houses of Dalkey were subsequently built) to building speculators for substantial sums of money. Sadly, the fair Etty (described by ballad singers of the day as ‘Dalkey’s beautiful dreamer’) failed to benefit from the sale of her father’s plot. She died of consumption, or possibly embarrassment, not long after the failure of her gold mining enterprise.

During the 18th and early 19th century, the wealthy residents of Dalkey would go on a Grand Tour of Europe. When they reached the Bay of Naples, they noted a similarity between its stunning scenery and the stunning scenery surrounding us here in Dalkey. This inspired them to give their Dalkey villas Italianate place-names such as Amalfi and Sorrento when they returned from their travels, hence Dalkey’s tagline today of ‘Ireland’s Amalfi Coast’.