Qualla: Wicklow Mountains

Wicklow Mountains: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Schcambo at English Wikipedia, Public domain. Pour rain on these mountains and it does not soak in. The thin blanket bog cannot hold much water, so the rivers here rise quickly and angrily after storms: hydrologists call it a flashy hydrograph, but it just means the streams fill in minutes and the waterfalls run hardest in the worst weather. The Wicklow Mountains form the largest continuous upland area in Ireland, sprawling across the centre of County Wicklow and spilling into Dublin, Wexford, and Carlow. Their granite was forced up four hundred million years ago when the continents of Baltica and Laurentia collided. The ice cut the rest.

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Image: Schcambo at English Wikipedia | Public domain

Wicklow Mountains: How a Continent Folds a Mountain

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sabrina Manfield, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Iapetus Ocean closed at the end of the Silurian period. The continents on either side smashed together, and the heat of that collision pushed up a vast batholith of granite known as the Leinster Chain - 1,500 square kilometres of slow-cooled magma that runs from Dun Laoghaire...

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Image: Sabrina Manfield | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wicklow Mountains: Saint Kevin's Valley

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Schcambo at English Wikipedia, CC BY 3.0. In the late 6th century, a member of the Dal Messin Corb tribe named Cobh - later venerated as Saint Kevin - crossed the mountains from Hollywood village via the Wicklow Gap and founded a monastery beside the Upper and Lower Lakes at Glendalough. By the 8th century the monastic c...

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Image: Schcambo at English Wikipedia | CC BY 3.0

Wicklow Mountains: Land of War

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Joe King, CC BY-SA 3.0. After the Norman invasion of 1170, the Gaelic O'Byrne and O'Toole families were displaced from Kildare and moved into the Wicklow Mountains - the O'Byrnes in the east, the O'Tooles in the west. From their mountain strongholds they conducted a centuries-long campaign of harassment...

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Image: Joe King | CC BY-SA 3.0

Wicklow Mountains: Gold, Granite, and a Nugget the Size of a Fist

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Britishfinance, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1795, workers felling timber on Croghan Kinsella mountain found gold in a tributary of the River Aughrim. The river was renamed the Goldmines River. During the brief Wicklow Gold Rush, local prospectors recovered about 80 kilograms of gold, including a single nugget weighing 6...

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Image: Britishfinance | CC BY-SA 4.0

Wicklow Mountains: Sally Gap and the Modern Mountain

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah777 at English Wikipedia, Public domain. The Wicklow Military Road, built between 1800 and 1809 to give British troops access to rebel hideouts after the 1798 rising, still runs from Rathfarnham across the Sally Gap to Aghavannagh. It is one of the most spectacular drives in Ireland - black peat bog, glacial valleys, th...

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Image: Sarah777 at English Wikipedia | Public domain