Volume 6
Winter 1986-1987
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Lisburn Historical
Society |
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CHROME HILL, LAMBEG
ROBERT McKINSTRY
The original small farm dwelling, out of which the present
house has grown, was probably built sometime during the second half of the 17th
century by the Wolfenden family, who are generally thought to have come from the
Low Countries1 and whose name is closely associated with the early
linen industry in this area of the Lagan Valley.2 About the same time
as they built their home, they established a paper making works nearby. This
business was situated where the old Lambeg Weaving Company factory stands,
between the Ballyskeagh Road and the Lagan. They also had a blanket making works
on the Co. Antrim side of the river, beside the River Road.3 Chrome
Hill was, therefore, both a farm house and a factory owner's home, and has
continued to be so until the beginning of this century. The earliest gravestone in the Wolfenden enclosure in
Lambeg churchyard records the death of Jean Wolfenden `wife of Abraham Wolfenden
deceased September ye 15th 1693 aged 43 years'.4 This Abraham may
well be the Abraham Wolfenden referred to in the 1719 volume of the Hertford
Estate's Rental and Account Books as having rented the mills at Ballyskeagh
(their size being 25 acres 2 roods 31 perches) at a rent of £7 18s.5
If he was not the builder of Chrome Hill, he is its earliest known occupant. In
1690, he is said to have supplied the timber needed to repair one of King
William's wagons, when it broke down at the ford over the Lagan, where the
Wolfenden Bridge now stands. The King is said to have waited in Abraham's house,
while the wagon was being mended.6 The `M. Richard Wolfenden of Lambeg, linen draper',
referred to on one of the gravestones, was probably Abraham's son. He married
Margaret Waring and died in 1743, at the age of seventy. His son, the second
Richard (1723-75), married Jane Usher of Aghalee. Their son, the third Richard
(17571816), married Mary Gayner, the daughter of Edward Gayner of Derriaghy, a
friend of John Wesley. Wesley's Journal of 10 June 1787 records a visit to
Chrome Hill. While he was there, he is said to have twisted two beech saplings
together (to symbolize the continual union of Methodism and the Church of
Ireland). and formed what still survives as two large intertwining beech trees,
known as Wesley's Tree'.7 Richard's sister, Anne Jane, married
another neighbour, John Charley of Finaghy House, who has served his time under
her father.8 The last Wolfenden to be buried in Lambeg churchyard was
John (1788-1829). Though a Thomas Wolfenden is recorded as being a Churchwarden
in Lambeg Parish Church as late as 1886, the family had by this time moved to
Dublin and become muslin factors at the Linen Ha11.9 In 1830, the Lambeg works,
by then also producing cotton goods, calico and muslin, were sold to Richard
Niven of Manchester.'10 It was Niven who rechristened the house Chrome Hill - it
had earlier been known variously as Harmony Hill and Lambeg House - to
commemorate his discovery of the use of bichromates for textile printing.11
He died in 1866,12 but his widow lived on at Chrome Hill until her
death in 1899. 13 The previous year, the house had been purchased by
John Milligen,14 a Belfast coal merchant and property speculator. He,
however, only lived in it for a few years, before moving to Glenmore in 1901. He
then rented the house to a Major Adam Jenkins and subsequently to Benjamin
Hobson, whose family owned the linen works at Ravernet. In 1921. Milligen sold
the house to F. G. Barrett and shortly afterwards, disposed of all his property
in Lambeg, including Glenmore. In 1924, Barrett sold the building to Mrs.
Downer, who remained in possession of the house for the next forty-three years.
In 1967, after her death, Chrome Hill came on the market and my wife Cherith and
I bought it. Abraham Wolfenden's original 17th century vernacular house 15
can be unravelled from the later additions, by looking at the existing ground
plan and taking particular note of the large, very deep chimney breast in the
room which has always been the kitchen, immediately to the right as one enters
through the front door. The unusually large scale of this chimney breast
indicates that it must be the original hearth. with the front end forming part
of the lobby to the first entrance door, the lines of which are still
recognisable in an existing wall recess in this part of the front wall of the
house. At the far end of this chimney breast, there was originally a small
staircase which connected to the room or loft above. A few crumbling steps of
this staircase can still be seen from inside the roof space, by means of shining
a light vertically into and down through the first floor timber-framed wall,
beside the sitting room fireplace. To my mind, such features as I have
described, make it clear that Chrome Hill developed from a two unit, two
storeyed or lofted house of hearth/lobby formation, with the stairs at the rear
of the chimney stack between it and the back wall. This practice is commonly
seen in English hearth/lobby houses of the 17th century, but is rarely found in
Northern Ireland.16 Sometime around the 1760s (judging by the style of
architectural detail), the original house was heightened, remodelled and
extended, by adding a three storey wing on to the west side, three rooms long.
The difference in floor levels between the old and new blocks, and the way they
are set at right angles to each other, suggests that this wing may have already
existed as a cloth store, positioned close to the house for security, giving the
building a T-shaped form. At this time, the front door was moved westwards by three
bays, to open into a proper little entrance hall, made out of the front part of
the second room in the original house. From here, a fine staircase was built to
a spacious landing (a duplicate of the entrance hall), which leads into a large
sitting room made out of the original loft above the hearth room. These changes of the 1760s reflect the relatively more
sophisticated, formal and even spacious life style of the 18th century factory
owner. This is underlined by the architectural embellishments introduced as part
of the improvements and sometimes applied with little regard for symmetry and
regularity. Nevertheless, I am constantly aware that it is actually the effect
of this robust classical detailing, laid over the very basic low set 17th
century vernacular house, which gives Chrome Hill its unique character. Much of this mid 18th century detail still survives intact.
There is the carved sandstone pedimented entrance doorway with cushioned freize,
and the lugged architraves which are found around nearly all the six fielded
panel doors in the house and repeated in the window architraves. Behind these,
all the panelled shutters are still in working order. A particularly attractive
feature of these windows is the little window seat set well down below the
actual window sill and carried out beyond the window reveals, to form a base for
the architraves. There is a small fully panelled room which served as a library.
There is, in addition to this panelling, good joinery work in the staircase -
sturdy turned balusters, three to a step, and double newel posts. Above the main
staircase and hanging over it, rises the little winding attic stairs, which
disappear into the ceiling in a delightfully unexpected way. Equally charming is
the little semi-dome which forms a sloping archway over the four steps from the
first floor landing, to two of the bedrooms in the west block. This archway
theme is repeated below, at each end of the entrance hall. The 18th century
cornices only survive in the hall above the staircase, on the landing and in the
room at the back of the hall (now lower hall). Here, on the ceiling, is the only
example of decorative plasterwork: two rectangular panels with reeded frames,
containing rococo scrolls and central circular panel with the Wolfenden arms,
consisting of a chevron between three wolves' heads. Probably the finest architectural flourish is to be seen in
the first floor sitting room, with its large Venetian window in the back wall,
facing north, and its panelled dado containing two little `secret' jib doors.
That on the right side of the gray and white marbled mantel was once a cupboard,
while that to the left opened on to the hearth staircase. However, the 17th
century origins of the room are still obvious in the two corner windows facing
south. These have hardly any vertical architraves at their comer sides, because
the original low loft window openings which form part of the taller 18th century
openings, were built tight against the long side walls. Likewise, the corner
position of the front door opening in the entrance hall means that there is no
architrave at all on the left hand side. An ambitious rebuilding such as I have described is usually
only undertaken when a new generation or a new owner takes over. In this case,
it was probably the second Richard Wolfenden, who, at the age of twenty,
succeeded his father in 1743. The work may well not have been carried out until
after he had married Jane Usher. Probably soon after Richard Niven bought Chrome Hill and
the factory on the other side of the road, he set his crest (like a seat on the
house), into the stone pediment above the front door. He must also have built
the elegant two storey late Regency style elliptical curved bow as an extension
to the middle room on the west side of the house. By doing this, the middle room
became a comparatively spacious dining room, with flat fluted pilasters marking,
on the old walls, the position from where the new bow front springs. The wall
opposite was remodelled as a kind of screen of three segmental arches, the wider
central archway framing a sideboard recess, and the doors each side (one to a
cupboard, the other to a little entrance lobby) surmounted by a smaller blind
arch with architraves similar to the pilasters. Outside, the tall painted timber
mullions and transomes in the bow contrast happily enough with the earlier
double-sash twelve-light windows in the rest of the house. In Richard Niven's time, there were two ways into the
house. Firstly, there was the old drive" (reputed to be part of the
original road south) which started at the high canal bridge, ran west across a
large field flanking the stable yard on its north side, then along in front of
the house, finally coming out onto the road again, just at the river bridge (now
known as Wolfenden Bridge).18 Secondly, there was the steep driveway
up to the stable yard and the back of the house, from the road immediately
opposite the factory entrance. Sometime before the 1860s, Niven made a new main
entrance just west of this secondary entrance, with the driveway describing a
wide semicircular sweep up to the front door. This gave the visitor the best
view of the west front of the house, and its new picturesque bow. By this
alteration, that part of the old driveway which ran straight from the house down
to the river, was made redundant and eventually disappeared. However, the other
part, that from the canal bridge, survived into this century and though the
little lodge house has gone, part of the gates still stand, in a ruinous
condition. Both Niven's new entrance gates and the entrance eastwards (that
opposite the factory), with its original 18th century gates and piers, are in
use today. The Edwardian alterations were probably made by John
Milligen, when he lived in the house for a short time, in 1900. The entrance
hall was enlarged by taking in the back room off the hall and lowering its floor
level to the level of the lower ground floor room behind the stairs. This
created additional height in at least part of the hall, and the two rather
disparate spaces were united by a wide archway, with four stone steps spanning
the full width of the opening. A large leaded stained glass window, in an Art
Novena design of pale blue-green, was inserted in the back wall, casting light
on the black, red and white encaustic tiled floor. There is a smaller version of
this hall window in the extension built out from the staircase half landing,
which one enters by what was the original staircase window, and which was built
essentially to house the outside cold water storage tank. This tank serves the
pine sheeted bathroom and cloakroom, made at the same time within the walls of
the house. From this period, also, must belong the curious little Smoke Room (so
labelled on the old room bell indicator board) at the top of the house, with a
sort of panelled vaulting created out of the slopes in the interlocking roofs.
This would have been the date at which the house was pebbledashed. The stone
quoins which are visible on an old photograph, were cut back and cemented over
at the same time. * * * * * * When we came to live at Chrome Hill in 1968, we had general
repairs carried out, new central heating installed, the building rewired and
fully painted. The exterior pebbledash was painted white. We made the old
kitchen into a children's playroom and turned the little panelled library beside
the dining room into a new kitchen, making sure that the panelling was left as
undisturbed as possible, and using the built-in bookcases as storage cupboards.
This new kitchen and the dining room were connected by a new doorway with
shutters, so that the two rooms now function as one. I removed the chimney stack and the two small windows on
either side of it, from the top of the south gable wall of the west block, and
substituted these for a large semi-circular window. I also remodelled the dormer
window and door leading on to the balcony of the west bow, so that it is now
more Georgian in appearance. Perhaps the most significant addition we have made has been
the large carport attached to the north side of the house, with its gable end at
right angles to the building. The idea was to try and make this little structure
look like an 18th century farm building on one side and a garden pavillion on
the other, one side of the carport being linked to a paved terrace I had already
made on this particular side of the house. Therefore, the open long side of the
carport has two simple creosoted timber columns dividing its length into three,
while the other long side has three arched openings with sheeted shutters, which
can be left open or shut, depending on the weather. What has it been like for Cherith and me and our three boys to live in this old multilayered house, with its feeling of still being in the country (despite being quite close to town)? Above all, there has been the joy of space and light and plenty of room. Yet the scale is intimate and there is a mystery about the way rooms lead into each other, which children love and grown-ups can find disconcerting. The place looks its best in spring or autumn sunlight, when the trees are not heavy with leaves, and a slanting light pours through the old windows, across the panelled shutters and onto the boarded floors. The past is very near then. This is how I like to remember it when I'm away. REFERENCES
Robert McKinstry is a well-known local architect, with a
particular interest in the restoration of old buildings. His most important
commission has been the refurbishment of Belfast's Grand Opera House. He was
also responsible for the remodelling of the assembly room in Lisburn Museum. THE EARLY CHRISTIAN RINGFORT OF LISSUERICHARD
WARNER INTRODUCTION One of
the commonest types of ancient monument in Ireland, still to be seen in large
numbers around the countryside despite a high rate of destruction, is the small
circular bank of earth, usually with a still visible surrounding ditch, known to
the countryman as a `fort' or `forth'. A typical example of this monument1,
referred to by archaeologists as a `ringfort', or 'rath', would have a single
earthcrn bank with an outer ditch, would be between about 50 and 150 feet (15 and 50 metres) across internally (from bank
crest to bank crest), and would have an internal area averaging about 1/4 acre
(1/10 hectare). It would have a single entrance facing downhill, with a causeway
across the ditch, and would be located on slightly sloping land below the 600
foot (200 metre) contour. There are variations, of course. The size can be
greater; there can be two, or even three close-set concentric banks-and-ditches
it may be sited on top of a drumlin. The bank may be partly or wholly made of
stone with no outer ditch or the whole site may be raised as an earthen
platform. But most of these sites have one thing in common: their explanation.
They are mostly the defended habitations
of wealthy cattle farmers living in the `early Christian period', that is,
between about 500 A.D. and about 1200 A.D. They are `defensive' not in their
siting, which is dictated by agricultural convenience, but in the nature of the
surrounding bank and-ditch2. A fairly large number of ringforts have been excavated over the years and although these were seldom extensive it is nonetheless possible to make some generalisations about the contemporary appearance of such a site.3 The bank, made of the upcast from the often deep ditch, may well have had a reverted inner face, either with a continuous paling of wooden stakes or planks or with dry-stone. There is likely to have been a single, substantial house at its center either circular with wattle-and-stake walls or rectangular, with stone-and-earth walls. There would have been a square central hearth often made of four large stones set on edge and the roof would have been thatched with straw, turves or heather. In the courtyard, the annular area between the house and the bank, we would expect a number of smaller buildings and animal pens, the sort of structures one would find in a mixed working farm. The entrance to the site, across a causeway left undug in the ditch, would have led through a fairly strong gateway in the bank, and then by a paved or cobbled path to the main house. Many of these features were found in a carefully excavated ringfort in the townland of Ballymacash, two miles north of Lissue, one of the few local excavated forts. 4 Outside the fort, we would expect to find more pens as well as fields and the huts of the farm-workers.
There
may again be variations on this theme. For instance, the occupants, instead of
being farmers, might have been craftsmen. In this case, we would expect to find,
in or around the ringfort, traces of their workshops or furnaces instead of farm
buildings. Or the occupants might have been nobles or kings, in which case we
would expect stronger defenses, a larger house and perhaps other signs of power
or wealth.5 In some cases, no traces of occupation or structures are
present, and the site is interpreted as a defended stockyard.
In
place-names, two words commonly refer to ringforts. The first is Rath,
the anglicised form of Irish ráith, literally meaning an `earthern bank'.
Rathmore-`great fort'-near Antrim is an example. The other word is Lis, Irish lios
(earlier les), literally meaning a 'courtyard' or `enclosure'.6
This is the first element in the townland name Lissue, Irish Lios-Áedha
`the fort of (a person
called) Aed'.7 DR BERSU During the Second World War, Dr. Gerhard Bersu, a leading German archaeologist, who had come to Britain as a refugee from Hitler's persecutions, was interned with his wife Maria on the Isle of Man. Soon after his release, Dr. Bersu was given a post at the Institute of Advanced Studies in Dublin, and his great excavational skill was used for the benefit of Irish archaeology. He agreed to excavate a ringfort in the North of Ireland and Professor Estyn Evans of the Queens University searched widely for a suitable site. After much consideration, it was decided that Lissue was a good choice. Accordingly, a very substantial portion of the interior was carefully excavated during the summers of 1946 and 1947, under the direction of Dr. and Mrs. Bersu, and the preliminary results were promptly published in the Ulster Journal of Archaeology.' Dr. Bersu's subsequent return to the Directorship of the Roömisch‑Germanische Kommission in Frankfurt am Main, and his death some years later, prevented full publication although he did write an almost complete text9 This article is intended simply as an appetiser for the final report.
LISSUE
The
ringfort of Lissue, three miles west of Lisburn,10 is, in its
unexcavated appearance, an almost typical example of the class. It lies on the
eastern slope of a small hill, or drumlin, just below its summit at 130 feet (40
metres) above sea-level. It has one surrounding bank-and-ditch and the entrance
faces downhill (to the east). With a diameter of some 200 feet (60 metres), it
is, however, rather larger than usual. Poor drainage in this heavy local clay
means that much of the internal area and the ditch are often waterlogged. For
the archaeologist, this is a beneficial situation for it means that organic
material, such as wooden vessels, or the seeds of plants and crops, may be
preserved. It was immediately apparent to Dr. Bersu that the interior of the
ringfort had been cultivated during the 19th century by the use of spade ridges.
This widespread recent use of the interiors of ringforts is always destructive
of much of the archaeological evidence, and Lissue had not escaped. But Dr.
Bersu was a meticulous excavator and even where cultivation had been heavy, he
found archaeological remains. He also found that the erosion, and deliberate
partial levelling of the bank had, prior to this cultivation, covered the part
of the interior just inside the bank with a protective layer of extra soil. This
had preserved enough underlying evidence to allow a reconstruction of the
history and original appearance of the site. Dr. Bersu also discovered that by a
happy chance (and unusually in such sites) the presumably continuous
waterlogging of the interior since its abandonment over a thousand years ago
had, in many cases, preserved the stumps of original oak posts in the ringfort.
He uncovered enough of the interior of the enclosure to ascertain the plan of
the structures formed by these posts and others that had since rotted, and an
unusual reconstruction it was. A detailed description of the soils and layers
uncovered by Dr. Bean, and his arguments for their reconstruction, will have to
await the final report. Suffice it here to outline the archaeology of the site
as he interpreted it. FIRST RINGFORT.. LISSUE I
Dr.
Bersu discovered that there had been a small ringfort on the site prior to the
construction of the one now visible. Virtually none of its interior or bank
survived the later occupation and use of the site, but he completely emptied a
substantial stretch of its steep-sided, six feet (two metres) deep, flat
bottomed ditch of its fill. At the bottom was a thin muddy silt in which was
embedded much organic debris, such as sticks, wooden vessels and animal bones,
as well as pottery, all thrown in by the occupants.
SECOND
RINGFORT: LSSUE 11 (fig. 2) The
second, much larger, ringfort is the one that can be seen today. It had a
v-sectioned ditch some 15 feet (5 metres) wide and six feet (2 metres) deep
which was open for far longer than the first ringfort ditch. It had been partly
filled with much organic detritus thrown in by the occupiers of the settlement,
and after abandonment, a layer of peat had grown in the still-waterlogged
hollow. Much later, some of the bank had been pushed into the half-filled ditch,
almost filling it. The bank had originally been quite substantial, perhaps six
feet (two metres) high and 20 feet (6 metres) wide, constructed entirely of clay
(probably that dug from the ditch). It had been faced on the inside with a
paling of wooden posts set continuously in a trench. Dr.
Bersu found that the interior had been heightened twice by putting down a layer
of clay, possibly because of water sitting on the surface. The bank was remodelled with a new inner revetment each time. There were therefore three well
defined phases of occupation relating to this second ringfort, and where the
layers remained undisturbed by the later spade ridges, the material from them
could be related to each phase.
The
entrance to the central partitioned `hearth' area led along a paved path through
a six foot wide passage through the bank, to a gate in its outer face. Thence,
unusually for a ringfort, it led across the ditch over a wooden bridge rather
than the usual causeway, and out through another gate in a fence on the outer
edge of the ditch. In the mid 1940s, the farmer remembered a gravelly `roadway'
leading away from this entrance, towards the east. As
I have said, the complete structure-the bank revetment, the building, the bridge
and the central partitioned area - was replaced twice, giving three virtually
identical structural phases. As to the artifacts discovered, these levels of the
second ringfort produced a large amount of the 'souterrain' pottery, a bronze
pin, some iron objects, two glass beads and a fragment of a bronze ladle.15
The pottery was rather different from that of the first ringfort, being better
made and having, in many cases, its cordons decorated with thumb impressions or
with little squeezed-up pyramids of clay.
But
the most spectacular find, from the last phase, was a slab of slate covered with
carefully drawn incised sketches: an animal, bits of interlace, geometric
patterns etc., (fig 3). It had on it the sort of patterns that could be found on
contemporary metal ornaments, or in decorated gospel books, or perhaps even on
peoples' clothes. Decorated slates like this are called by archaeologists
'trial' pieces (or 'motif' pieces), but their real purpose is quite unknown. 16
This one was found in the layer of charcoal and burning that represented the
demise of the site, a dramatic end in which a large proportion of the great
structure was destroyed by fire. Usefully it can be approximately dated to about
A.D. 1000 by the ornaments carved on it. This approximate date is supported by
the other artifacts, to which a date around the 10th century would apply. It was
Bersu's belief that each wooden building would hardly have lasted more than 50
years in the Irish climate, then as now rather wet. This would give some 150
years for the maximum length of use of the three phases, and an earliest date in
the middle of the 9th century for the first ringfort and the beginning of the
second. These dates are, of worse, only approximate, but as we would hardly
expect such a huge structure to be replaced sooner than was necessary, they seem
reasonable. PURPOSE Although
the structures discovered by Dr. Bersu in the second ringfort - the huge house
and the bridge - are unparalleled in any other ringfort, they are not on that
account to be thought of as non-Irish. The ringfort itself was typical in its
general form and siting. The finds, particularly the pottery, were absolutely
characteristic of contemporary sites in the north east of Ireland. It was,
indeed, a purely Irish site, and the explanation for its strange nature must be
in the complexity of contemporary Irish society. Berm, in common with many
archaeologists, was unfamiliar with the fact that the Early Christian Irish left
an incredibly full written record of their times.17 It was a society
whose it is only part of its surviving evidence, and can only be interpreted
within the historial framework. 18 Having said this, it must also be
emphasised that the attempt to connect historical events with archaeological
evidence is fraught with dangers. It is an exercise which provides only
possibilities, not certainties, but it is worth mooting these possiblities when
they help to flesh out the bare archaeology with real people and events. It
is clear that the second ringfort was not simply a farm, as most were. There are
descriptions of houses in the texts preserved from that time 19, and
these include huge round houses with many partitions. The people who would be
expected to have a house of this size were a king and a hosteller. There is some
evidence to support each of these possibilities as the explanation for Lissue. A
hosteller was a wealthy member of society whose function was to provide
accommodation for travellers 20 The hostel building itself would have
been substantial, and would probably have been a separate establishment from the
hosteller's farm(s). It is likely to have been close to roads or a river
crossing. There was probably a crossing of the river Lagan near here-the name
'Long Kesh' on the Co. Down side of the river implies the existence of a
causeway, perhaps leading from such a crossing. Lissue is also on the opposite
side of the river from the Early Christian monastery at Blaris, and as centres
of pilgrimage and commerce, monasteries were targets for many travellers, though
they might be expected to have had their own hostels. On
the other hand, we have quite good evidence of a royal explanation. The main
royal dynasty providing kings in east Co. Down and south Co. Antrim at this time
was that of the Dál Fiatach 21 Their kings were overkings of
many of the minor tribes scattered around the area and often of the whole north
east (the Ulaid). They had strong links with Downpatrick from an early
time, but had fragmented into several separate dynasties, between which the
kingship alternated, by the 9th century. For instance, one dynastic line had its
capital at Dún Echduch, Duneight in Co. Down, which was the
target of enemy action in 942, 10(14 and 1 011. 22 In A.D. 882 Ainbíth,
a powerful king of the Ulaid, and a member of the Dúan Echdach
dynastsy (who were descendants of his grandfather, Eochaid) died. He is
credited in an early genealogical tracts with having founded the `family of Lisaeda',
that is the `family of the fort of Aed', Aed being his father. We
cannot be certain that the Lios Áedha in which this family lived was our
Lissue, but it seems probable. As the Lios of the text was named after Ainbíth's
father, we would assume it was built by him also. Áed was not,
apparently, king, the kingship having gone instead to his brother. Ainbíth's
son did become king (of Ulaid as well as Dál Fiatach) but I know
of no record of further direct descendants. Áed
would have died around the middle of the 9th century (his father died in 810,
his brother in 839 and his son in 882). This is the date that Dr. Bersu
postulated on archaeological grounds for the first ringfort and the beginning of
the second (as I have said, Bersu was unaware of the historical evidence). We
can, perhaps, hypothesize that Áed built the first ringfort, and his son
Ainbíth, on becoming king, built the substantially larger replacement.
We know that Lissue ended in a conflagration that consumed much of the third
version of the great house. If this had been accidental, we should wonder why it
was not then replaced. Even if it was intentional, we cannot assume that such a
burning was part of an event important enough to be recorded in the annals. But
there are two recorded events of which either possibly provide an explanation.
In
1004, the king of the Dál Fiatach was killed in a great battle at Crew
near Glenavy. The battle is described in the contemporary annal as having
`extended to Drumbo and Duneight'. Clearly if fighting stretched from Crew to
Drumbo, then Lissue, being in between, would hardly have escaped the
consequences. The second event is close in time to the first. In 1011, the High
King, on a hosting into the north to take hostages (and impose his authority),
burned the capital of the local king at Duneight. We might well expect that
other sites in the locality with a family connection would have suffered a
similar fate. We may, in any case, be struck by the fact that these events date
roughly to the same time that the decorated stone indicates for the date of the
Lissue conflagration, about A.D. 1000. CONCLUSION
Clearly
the Lissue ringfort is, as the excavation showed, a remarkable site with a very
unusual structural history. 1 have shown how this might be explained by a
possible royal status, and how the archaeological and historical evidence might
possibly interconnect. The site is now on the edge of an expanding industrial
zone, and will no doubt soon be surrounded by factories. That it is safe we can
now be quite sure, as it is in State Care. We can be equally sure that it was a
site well worth preserving. REFERENCES
Richard Warner is Assistant Keeper of Later Antiquities in the Ulster Museum, where he specializes in the Early Iron Age and the Early Christian period.
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