Qualla: Howth

Howth: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Patriciazambello, Public domain. On 26 July 1914, the writer Erskine Childers sailed his yacht Asgard into Howth harbour, tied up at the pier, and unloaded 900 Mauser rifles for the Irish Volunteers. Many of those rifles would be fired less than two years later during the Easter Rising, and many more in the Anglo-Irish War that followed. The fishing village at the end of the Dublin peninsula has been a stage for things larger than itself for a very long time - Vikings, Normans, pirates, poets, presidents, drummers - all coming up the same stone pier above the same bay, looking back at the same city across the water.

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Image: Patriciazambello | Public domain

Howth: Edar's Peak

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Self, Public domain. The Irish name for Howth is Binn Eadair - Edar's peak, or Edar's hill - and the place appears in Ptolemy's second-century map of Ireland as an island called Edri Deserta. Once Howth Head really was an island; today it is connected to the rest of Dublin only by a narrow strip of s...

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Image: Self | Public domain

Howth: George IV's Footprints

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rossyxan, CC BY-SA 3.0. For a brief window in the early nineteenth century, Howth was meant to be Dublin's main connection to Britain. Construction of a harbour for the mail packet ships began in 1807, on the theory that Howth was less prone to highway robbery than the alternative at Dun Laoghaire, wher...

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Image: Rossyxan | CC BY-SA 3.0

Howth: Yeats's Cliff

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit User:Patriciazambello, CC BY-SA 3.0. William Butler Yeats lived at Balscadden House on Balscadden Road from 1880 to 1883 - he was in his teens then, and Howth's wild, fast-running streams and clifftop heath worked their way into his imagination. A blue plaque on the house quotes his most famous couplet: "I have spre...

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Image: User:Patriciazambello | CC BY-SA 3.0

Howth: The Cliff Path

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shinae Hyun, CC BY-SA 4.0. Six kilometres of footpath circle Howth Head from the DART station, climbing past the harbour, up onto open heath, and around the seaward edge of the peninsula past the Baily Lighthouse before dropping back into the village. The walk takes about two hours at a leisurely pace and ...

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Image: Shinae Hyun | CC BY-SA 4.0

Howth: Fish, Boats and Belonging

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit AndrewH, Public domain. Howth is still a working fishing harbour - one of Ireland's tier-two ports - with a state fisheries centre, an ice-making plant, a dry dock and boats coming in each morning. Around the harbour, the restaurants do brisk business in cod and ray and crab; the fishmongers sell what w...

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Image: AndrewH | Public domain