Advances in Irish Quaternary Studies

Abstract

Investigation of Ireland’s Quaternary heritage has a long history that extends back prior to the setting up of the Geological Survey of Ireland in 1845. Ireland’s rich Quaternary deposits and land forms have ensured that it continues to be a key location for international research. The publication of The Quaternary History of Ireland in 1985 (Edwards and Warren 1985) has served the Quaternary community extremely well for three decades but it is now timely to review the substantial body of recent research into the Irish Quaternary. This chapter serves to provide a historical context to the syntheses of recent research that are reported in the subsequent chapters of this book. 1 The Background to the Irish Quaternary Investigation of Ireland’s Quaternary heritage has a long history that extends back prior to the setting up of the Geological Survey of Ireland in 1845. Quaternary sections had been extensively described and many were assigned to the classification of ‘drift’ explained at the time by the widely accepted Marine Submergence Theory. The Geological Society of Dublin, founded in 1831, included an address P. Coxon (&) F. Mitchell Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland e-mail: pcoxon@tcd.ie F. Mitchell e-mail: fraser.mitchell@tcd.ie S. McCarron Maynooth University, Maynooth, Kildare, Ireland e-mail: stephen.mccarron@nuim.ie The history of the Geological Survey of Ireland and its early work is interestingly summarized in Herries-Davies’ (1995) book “North From The Hook”. Chapter 8 “Delving the Drift” may be of particular interest to the reader. © Atlantis Press and the author(s) 2017 P. Coxon et al. (eds.), Advances in Irish Quaternary Studies, Atlantis Advances in Quaternary Science 1, DOI 10.2991/978-94-6239-219-9_1 1 on the marine origin of esker ridges but scientific knowledge was changing fast in the early 19th century and, although not immediately accepted, the theory of the ‘Ice-Age’ was being formulated, analysed and applied elsewhere in Europe. Agassiz visited Dublin in 1835 to attend the British Association and again in 1840 —the second time to deliberately seek evidence for former glaciation. His trip to Ireland saw him identifying moraines in the Wicklow Mountains amongst other features some time before geologists in general accepted the glacial theory. Interestingly it was the existence of widespread ‘shelly boulder clays’ that forced retention of the Marine Submergence Theory and ironically it is the fossiliferous character of many Irish glacial sediments that still promotes debate today. The middle 19th century saw a plethora of Quaternary information published by natural historians, academic geologists and the officers of the Ordnance and Geological Surveys. This work is published in many outlets and the publications are far too numerous to cite here but examples include the maps of Sollas (1896) and Kilroe (1888). Indeed, by 1867 Close had prepared a map of the glaciation of Ireland (Fig. 1) that clearly outlines ice movement patterns and the widespread ice cover that we now accept and Kinahan (1865) had correctly identified and commented upon the interglacial deposits that we now know as the Gortian type-site. The mapping, classification and description of the Irish Quaternary geology gathered pace during the latter part of the 19th century and it is interesting to consider the huge impact that the 1′′ to the mile (1: 63360) Ordnance Survey maps (1st Edition 1857–1861) and the 6′′ to the mile 1: 10560 (1832–1846). These were the DEMs and satellite images of the day (Fig. 2). Into the 20th century the development of Quaternary Science in Ireland continued to benefit from rigorous investigations by many amateur scientists in addition to the few professional Quaternary geologists based in Irish academic institutions. In addition to the officers of the Geological Survey, frequent visitors to Ireland from all corners of the globe published through the Royal Irish Academy, the Irish Naturalists Journal and other scientific outlets. Herries-Davies (1995) marks the arrival of Lamplugh and his inauguration of a drift survey in 1901 as the ‘... dawn of the modern era in the survey of Ireland’s Pleistocene legacy...’ and it was at this time that the remarkable William Bourke Wright was appointed to the Survey. Wright mapped extensively in and around Howth and the Dublin Mountains (noting correctly that the many deeply incised dry valleys were glacial meltwater channels). In 1903 Wright began mapping in Cork where he and Herbert Brantwood Muff made the discovery of what we now know as the Courtmacsherry raised platform (Wright and Muff 1904; Fig. 3). Wright went on to be one of the most influential Quaternary geologists of his time publishing the first edition of his book, The Quaternary Ice Age in 1914 in what was a major turning point in the basis of Quaternary studies at the time (Wright 1914). At the turn of the century in Ireland the inclusion of Quaternary sequences on geological maps of the time is exemplified by the map drawn by Hallissy (1914), part of the Royal Irish Academy’s classic Clare Island Survey (Fig. 4). 2 P. Coxon et al.