Having historic monuments dotted across their farmland is something that the Maguire family have embraced and protected for generations in Co. Dublin.
The presence of Neolithic, Bronze Age, and early medieval structures on the land serve as a reminder to landowner and farmer, Philip Maguire, of the significance of the area known locally as Newtown Hill, just a stones throw from Glencullen in the Dublin uplands.
While the land is now occupied by Wicklow Cheviot ewes and their lambs roaming the hill, a vivid picture of what the area was like over the centuries was painted by Maguire, accompanied with his son Daniel and archaeologist Neil Jackman on a recent tour of the area.
In the event organised by the Dublin Mountains Partnership as part of the Dublin Mountains Festival, the Maguires and Jackman led a group up a historic hill that has seen over 5,000 years of life and farming in the Dublin uplands.
The objective was not climb to simply walk to the top of Newtown Hill to admire the stunning views of Dublin city, the Great Sugar Loaf, and to watch out for red kites flying overhead, but to admire what was lying on the surface of the land, which is what previous generations of the Maguire family had done for centuries.
An important resource in abundance on the surface of the hill are boulders of granite, which the Maguires had long quarried to be used for building, most notably used to build Pearse Street Garda station in Dublin.
There is a strong relationship built between those who dwelt on the hill and who lived in the city, stretching back as far as when the Vikings came to this island and would have relied heavily on the agricultural outputs such as those from Newtown Hill.
Philip Maguire’s grandfather, his namesake, also carried this tradition by his trading at the Dublin cattle market for years.
While his flock of Wicklow Cheviot sheep occupy the hill, a breed known for their hardiness, it was not always livestock that was farmed there.
While the sheep are grazing on the hill, under their hooves ridges can be seen formed in the earth, evidence of lazy beds where those during the Bronze Age grew crops.
Close by, a ring of stone can be seen, further evidence of an early medieval ringfort, known as a cashel which also contains traces of rectangular structures inside, which archaeologist Neil Jackman explained was influenced by a Viking style of building.
Jackman, who has carried out archaeological excavations nationwide, was content to simply walk the hills with the Maguires, whose ancestors left the historic monuments untouched, and to also look further beyond these structures, and look towards how those who built them centuries ago actually lived.
However, Jackman was critical of those who may have used the suspected Bronze Age fulacht fiadh, where cooking was done using heated stones being placed into a rectangular hole that was filled with water, which then boiled the water and cooked the food that lay inside.
Jackson was of the opinion that surely “roasted deer” would have been preferable to the meat that would have been boiled.
The Maguires led the group to the summit of Newtown Hill, to where a standing stone stood atop the hill, with a barrow alongside it.
The barrow (pictured above to the right), is an earthen mound that usually covers a burial surrounded by a circular ditch.
Philip Maguire recalls playing around the barrow as a child, when it was known as the ‘giant’s grave’.
Now his son, Daniel, who also led the tour, is an archaeology student at University College Dublin (UCD), and is developing an expert knowledge of the hill upon where he was raised and still farms on today, with the help of their sheepdogs.
With the various monuments still intact on their land, it is clear to see the care and the respect the generations of the Maguire family have paid to the historic hill upon which they still farm on today.
With the input of analysis from experts like Jackman, the local history knowledge of Philip Maguire, and all of the above from his son Daniel, the uniqueness and importance of an area like Newtown Hill was evident.