Research by an IT Sligo archaeology lecturer has produced fresh insights into how Anglo Norman occupation eroded Gaelic traditions of land access and ownership.
They are among a range of findings in a new book by Dr Fiona Beglane.
“Anglo-Norman Parks in Medieval Ireland”, which was launched in Sligo on Friday (June 19), is a pioneering study of the scale and function of land enclosures erected by leading families, and their impact on landscape and the Gaelic way of life.
The book, published by Four Courts Press, was launched by Geraldine Stout of the Archaeological Survey of Ireland, who is an authority on the Brú na Bóinne World Heritage Site. Dr Beglane joined IT Sligo in 2005.
The “parks” were not the manicured rolling lawns dotted with shrubbery that the word means today. They were areas ranging from small fields to large estates which Anglo-Norman lords marked out as their own by enclosing them in a fashion that was foreign to prevailing Gaelic norms almost a thousand years ago.
Dr Beglane is one of just a handful of zooarchaeologists working in Ireland. Her specialism involves the study of items such as animal bones and shells uncovered during excavation and relating them to human aspects of life on a particular site.
Historical records show that parklands were a common medieval feature in England where affluent lords kept fallow deer and nurtured and protected the timber they needed for beams and roof building.
Early Normans introduced fallow deer to England and later to Ireland. Dr Beglane’s interest in enclosed parklands was triggered when she found fallow deer bones on medieval and post-medieval sites in Greencastle, Co Down and Newtownstewart, Co Tyrone.
She concluded that Ireland, like England, must have had Anglo Norman enclosures for those animals but when she went looking for information she found just three articles on the subject.
In several years of extensive research of historical records, fieldwork and place name evidence she has found new evidence of parklands, mainly in Leinster, parts of Munster and Galway.
Dr Beglane said: “I found at least 46 parks in Ireland in the High Medieval period, from when the Anglo-Normans came on the scene in 1169 to about 1350. The most that anyone had come up with before this was about 13.”
“Also, the parks here were used differently from those in England. There were a lot more deer on the ones in England. Here they were used more for cattle and for timber and less for deer.”
The smallest park she identified was a four-acre “decent sized field” in Kerry and the biggest was 900 acres in Earlspark, Loughrea, Co Galway.
The enclosures marked out the land of the top families and those immediately below them on the social scale, she explained.
However, the whole idea of enclosure would have at variance with Gaelic traditions in which the local king or chieftain held the land in a sort of trust for his kinsfolk and where people could roam more freely across the land with their cattle.
“To make a piece of land that private wouldn’t have been part of the culture at the time. People would have expected land to be relatively accessible. You could have walked across other people’s land.”
“The parks were enclosed by big fences, thick hedges and deep ditches. They were designed to keep animals in and people out.
“One of the interesting things is that in Earlspark and also in Maynooth they deliberately built the parks enclosing monuments and places that would have been important to the early Gaelic people. It’s like they were taking ownership of the land and stating their ownership. It was very symbolic.”
Photo caption:
Dr Fiona Beglane, Lecturer in Archaeology at IT Sligo, with her new book “Anglo-Norman Parks in Medieval Ireland” published by Four Courts Press.