IN STEP ON THE MILITARY ROAD
REPORTER DAVID MEDCALF TOOK TO WICKLOW’S MILITARY ROAD WITH A BOOK ON THE THOROUGHFARE BY MICHAEL FEWER AS HIS GUIDE, BEFORE TALKING TO THE AUTHOR ABOUT HIKING, HISTORY AND CORRUPTION
IT is not the most pedestrian friendly route in County Wicklow but author Michael Fewer reckons that the Military Road offers a good starting point for at least 70 different worthwhile walks in the hills. The writer who began life in Waterford before moving to Dublin to study architecture as a young man gives Wicklow the credit for keeping him sane into his seventies.
The county has always provided him a therapeutic safety valve where he could commune with nature and he holds the Military Road in particular esteem as it starts on his doorstep in Rathfarnham.
It climbs through the hills of Dublin and across the border to Glencree, the start of a 40 mile journey through some of Ireland’s wildest scenery to the speck on the map which is Aghavannagh.
This journey across ferociously beautiful highlands was installed by a Scottish engineer called Alexander Taylor, as Fewer’s history of ‘The Wicklow Military Road’ recalls.’
It was published in 2007, almost two centuries after Taylor with his team comprising British Army soldiers and local labourers finished their task, and the book remains as fresh now as when it first appeared.
There are no great signs along the way advertising the Military Road, yet the route is more or less unchanged since Taylor plotted the way.
According to Michael Fewer, much of Ireland ended the 18th century fairly well endowed with roads, according to the standards of the time.
However, there were blank spots on the map and inland Wicklow was one of the blankest, a source of worry to the civil service mandarins in Dublin Castle. There were several rough thoroughfares running east/west but nothing which went north/south through the mountainous area.
The fact was that the administration loyal to the Crown received a severe shock in 1796 when Wolfe Tone came within an ace of landing in Kerry with a substantial French military force.
Then followed the United Irishmen rebellion of 1798 presenting a substantial challenge to the established order and in the same year, France belatedly succeeded in landing troops in Mayo.
Both the rebels and the invaders were seen off but the continuing activities of Michael Dwyer and his band of outlaws in West Wicklow served as a reminder that all was not at peace.
Landlords such as Lords Powerscourt and Meath were happy to provide the land so that a road could be built which would allow the army rapid access to parts of the country which had hitherto proved troublesome.
Work began in the year 1800 on the project which featured massive stone built barracks in Glencree, Laragh, Glenmalure and Aghavannagh.
As Michael Fewer tells it, the soldiers earned their seven shillings a week the hard way, hauling boulders from improvised quarries and camping out in some of Ireland’s wildest countryside.
Much of the road ran through upland bog which required the laying of foundations made from timber or from bundles of rushes.
The result, after everything settled down, is a surface which rolls and bumps along so that the modern motorist may likely feel seasick after a few miles travel.
The work crews had reached the high point of the junction at Sally Gap by 1802 when Dwyer was still at large but the legendary rebel had