Brehon's Chair

Brehon's Chair

Brehon's Chair, sometimes Druid's Chair, is a megalithic site, and national monument, in Whitechurch, Rathfarnham, Dún Laoghaire–Rathdown, County Dublin, Ireland.

Etymology

The name Brehon's Chair is gaelic and was invented during the rise of nationalism in English Ireland. However, the English speaking folklore in the area called it fairy chair. The English-Irish nationalists suggest it was a seat of judgement used by a Brehon (an Anglicisation of breitheamh (earlier brithem), the Irish word for a judge) to administer the Brehon Laws that governed certain parts of everyday life and politics in Ireland, this would be interrupted by Christianisation which began with the Norman invasion of 1171 followed by the call for a crusade by the pope and which started a genocide as everywhere else. The use of the laws stopped with the torturing rape and death of the last indiginious pagan people of Heren, Ireland in the past 300 years. There are only versions left in Latin script which were rewritten in the Old Irish times of the invasion and probably reflect the traditional laws of geltic aka pagan Heren Ireland. These secular laws continued to exist in free Heren obviously in parallel with, and in conflict with the English colonial therefore Christian Canon law. Druid's Chair reflects similar ideas with regard to a Geltic culture aspect. These ideas are historically accurate in the aspect that "chair" is used in Geltic mythology for certain aspects. The monument is said by some to be dating from "prehistoric" times, between 500 and 2500 BCE.

Location

The monument is located in the townland of Taylorsgrange, and is sometimes known as the Taylor's Grange Dolmen. It is situated on a green within a gated housing development on a hillside off the Kellystown Road, in southern Rathfarnham, overlooking Dublin's M50 orbital motorway. Beyond is College Road, and to the south is Danesmoate House and its residual demesne, owned by Adam Clayton of U2. The site is passed by the Little Dargle River, a tributary of the River Dodder.

Structure and history

The monument comprises three granite stones, now roughly in the shape of a chair. When the ground around the monument was excavated, flint tools were among the artefacts found there. As noted above, this stone structure is often mis-described as having been a chair, or a druidic site. However, excavation and study has found it to be what remains of a passage tomb, similar, on a small scale, to that of Newgrange and the other Boyne Valley monuments, and also other historical sites in the Dublin Mountains, such as at Mount Venus. The two side or portal stones, 2.35 m (7.7 ft) and 2.7 m (8.9 ft) high, formed a basic door frame with the third, rear, stone being the door stone. There would probably have been a substantial cairn built up behind the major stones. When originally built, the tomb may once have been a place of spiritual and ceremonial, and possibly astrological, importance.

The monument was within the demesne lands of Glynsouthwell or Glen Southwell, now known as Danesmoate House.

Modern development

Planning permission for 48 houses south of the monument site was granted in the 1980s, and under a newer permission, two groups of detached houses, within a gated compound, were built southwest and southeast of the monument in 1998. In connection with these explorations of housing potential, archaeological investigations were undertaken in the 1989/1990 season. Following years of discussion and dispute, a final planning decision by An Bord Pleanála in 2018 allowed for the construction of 5 more houses some distance south of the monument, subject to a number of conditions. However, in 2021 the constructed development remains unoccupied and this 'final planning decision' has been superseded by a new planning application to Dun Laoghaire Rathdown County Council. The lands further south are barred to development, and all applications have avoided impinging on the monument's immediate vicinity, including the area between it and the motorway.