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Ireland Photo of the Week: Every Tuesday, our friend Kevin Balanda is sharing a special photo from Ireland and telling its story here on Irlandnews. Kevin worked in Dublin for many years and now lives in West Cork. He enjoys taking his camera with him wherever he goes. This week we travel to County Dublin on the east coast.

Dalkey Island and the defence against feared and real threats

Dalkey, one of the wealthiest districts in South Dublin, was founded by the Vikings and nearby Collimore Harbour was a busy trading port. Close by, Dalkey Island is separated from the mainland by a narrow but deep channel called Dalkey Sound where ships could safely anchor, sheltered by the island, and unload their cargo. The shallower Dublin Bay prevented direct shipments into Dublin City at the time.

This photo shows the gun battery on Dalkey Island. The gun battery and Martello Tower no. 9, constructed around 1805, were part of defence system built along the coast of Ireland to defend against a feared French invasion during the Napoleonic Wars. However, the French never returned after their failed attempted invasions in the 1790s along the west coast of Ireland (see Part 1 photo). Eventually, Dalkey Island was abandoned by the military in 1886.

A more real threat faced by Europe throughout its history was the bubonic plague. In fact; Colimore Harbour was one of the ports through which the devastating “Black Death” arrived on the east coast of Ireland in the summer of 1348. During one of its return to Ireland in the Middle Ages (in 1575 this time), tradition has it that wealthier Dublin citizens used Dalkey Island as a place of refuge from this “Great Plague”. While this occasion was mentioned in Samuel Lewis’s 1837 “Topographical Dictionary of Ireland”; Dalkey Island probably played a similar role in earlier outbreaks of the plague. The desperate poor were left to take their chances on the mainland.

 

Photographic specifications: This photo was taken on a late Summer evening with a lens set at a 47mm focal length. Camera settings were ISO 100, f/6.7, 1/90s. It was edited in Lightroom.

© Kevin Balanda 2025

 

 

 

 

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This story / page is available in: German