![]() (Photo: National Museum of Ireland)ĭespite legal challenges and the vociferous demonstrations, the campaign was ultimately unsuccessful in stopping the work. Amber cross pendants like this are an unusual local innovation – although popular in Dublin, they are not often seen in Scandinavia. F X Martin – chairman of the Friends of Medieval Dublin – culminated in a protest march some 20,000 strong in 1978 and, the following year, a three-week sit-in on the site under the banner ‘Operation Sitric’, named after an 11th-century king of Dublin. Pioneering work by the late Breandán Ó Ríordáin (1927-2017 Pat’s predecessor both in excavating Viking Dublin, and as Director of the National Museum of Ireland) had previously demonstrated the extent of surviving archaeology from this period in the town, and as the significance of what lay beneath the surface at Wood Quay became clear, calls to halt the development grew in volume. The discoveries came to light because the Dublin Corporation (now Dublin City Council) had selected Wood Quay as the site of its new headquarters, and it was not a project without controversy. Image enhanced by Nick Maxwell for History Ireland 22/2, 2014) The finds so captured the popular imagination that, in 1978, a 20,000-strong march campaigned to ‘Save Wood Quay’. And, at the age of just 25, Wallace had been placed in charge of the entire investigation. With over 100 houses, thousands of objects, and a wealth of environmental evidence, the four-acre site at Wood Quay would shed light on every aspect of life in the early medieval settlement over a period of five centuries. Pre-development clearance of the Irish capital’s historic centre had laid bare an early medieval time capsule: waterlogged layers of well-preserved archaeology some 3m deep, containing unprecedented echoes of the town’s Viking past. It was not the soaring religious building that held his attention, though, but something a little closer to the earth. Carly Hilts takes a tour through the Viking streets.Īs Pat Wallace stood in the shadow of Dublin’s Christ Church Cathedral in 1974, the view that lay before him was truly spectacular. ![]() Now the full findings have been published for the first time in a landmark new book. ![]() (Photo: National Museum of Ireland) Between 19, excavations in Dublin’s historic centre revealed a vast swathe of intact archaeology spanning most of the Viking-founded town’s Scandinavian occupation. Overlooking the Wood Quay excavations in the heart of Dublin.
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