The Archaeology at Monkstown Wood
At Monkstown Wood you can find remains of a farm, water mill and mill race among the vegetation. The buildings have long since been knocked down and the race filled in, but you can still see the eastern boundary they formed, while metal pipes surface at the river’s weir.
The site, that was once seven large agricultural fields, was leased by the Housing Executive in late 1999 to the Woodland Trust for a period of 999 years. The fields were grazed until 2000 until we planted them with 8,000 trees between 2000 and 2004.
The valley floor up and downstream, was once a hive of water-powered milling activity. A chain of mill ponds and mill races drove the flax, logwood and weaving mills once located here.
The OS first series map (1832-46) shows a “Print Works” complete with race and millpond. However, this was nothing to do with newspapers but was actually a Calico Print Works producing a basic dyed cotton cloth. We tend to think of Linen as the historic cloth of these parts, but cotton cloth was also widely produced for the Irish market. This only came to an end with the advent of fast reliable steamship services across the Irish Sea. These were able to import cheap cotton cloth from giant factories in the north of England undercutting the local product.
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