Mount Kennedy WoodNEWTOWNMOUNTKENNEDY, CO. WICKLOW

This pocket guide is designed to provide visitors withbasic information on Mount Kennedy Wood in particularthe two main walking trails:• The Woodland Walk• The River Walk

We ask visitors to respect the floraand fauna and to co-operate withCoillte in keeping the woodland freeof litter. Please refrain from pickingplants or lighting fires and observethe woodland code:

Leave only footprints and take onlymemories

AcknowledgementsThe Mount Kennedy Woodland trail is part of the NeighbourWoodScheme, funded by the Forest Service, Department of Agriculture andFood, and co-ordinated by Wicklow County Council in partnership withCoillte, and Newtownmountkennedy and District Tidy Towns.

Research, background information and editorial support:Tim O’Regan,Deirdre Burns, Emma Benson,Tim Ryle and Paul Kavanagh Landscapeand Consultancy.

Editor: Donal Magner

Photography: Deirdre Burns,Tim Ryle, Coillte and Donal Magner

Illustrations: Courtesy of the Tree Council of Ireland

Maps: Adapted from Coillte maps and inventory records.

Design: Magner Communications

Woodland in transition –being replaced with

1

Mount Kennedy is one of a number ofwoodlands in Ireland participating in theNeighbourWood scheme, funded by theForest Service.The aim of the scheme isto enhance the heritage and conservationvalue of the wood in tandem with devel-oping its value as a recreational and educa-tional resource.The Mount Kennedyscheme is a partnership between Wicklow County Council, Coillte,and Newtownmountkennedy and District Tidy Towns.

As well as being used by the people of Newtownmountkennedy andsurrounding areas, the wood is an important amenity that attracts spe-cialist interest groups, walkers, tourists and school groups. In addition,part of the site has been adapted as a wheelchair friendly trail to pro-mote access and enjoyment for all. Mount Kennedy is one of the many

Coillte woodlands open to the public through-out Ireland.

Situated adjacent to the village of Newtown-mountkennedy, the wood has a rich variety ofnative and introduced broadleaved and conifer-ous trees. Mount Kennedy has ready accessthrough four entrances and has two small carparks. Some visitors leave their cars in the vil-lage and take a short walk to the small steppedentrance at the northern edge of the village.This entrance is located beside the tiny bridgewhich spans the Altidore River 150 metresnorth of the village Post Office.

Mount Kennedy is divided into two woodland trails: the River Walk and the Woodland Walk, although the Altidore River is common to both woodland trails.

Mount Kennedy Wood

There are over 3km of walks in Mount KennedyWood, beginning at the entrance near the bridgespanning the Altidore River (above, right). Thewoodland walks traverse well maintained forestroads through species such as Norway spruce,ash and sycamore (above).

2

The Woodland Walk

The Woodland Walk runs beside themeandering Altidore from the bridgeentrance and exits at a small car park(Map P1) and is reached by a shortseries of steps (far right). It containsspecies typical of riverside woods such asthe native alder, willow and ash. Ashgrows on a variety of soils but thrives inmoist conditions. Indigenous species arealso plentiful in the understorey andinclude hazel and holly.

Mount Kennedy also contains a variety ofintroduced species such as beech and sycamore which may have arrived during theseventeenth centuryalthough there is also aview that they may havebeen introduced by theNormans. Either way,these species quicklyadapted to Irish conditions and while notnative they are now as much part of thelandscape as indigenous species.

Ash

Oak may be the national treeof Ireland, but ash could wellclaim this distinction.Whileoak outnumbers it in placenames around the country, inmany respects, ash is a treethat is closer to the Irish consciousness. It resonatessound, movement, rhythm andtouch, as hurley, oar or pitchfork handle. Its rooted-ness in Irish culture datesback to a time when it wasrevered as a bile or sacredtree and to its emergence asClass 1 in the Old Irish TreeList alongside the othernobles of the wood (airgifedo in Irish).

Altidore River Willow Alder Hazel

AshHolly

Mountain ash

As the trail moves away from the river and rises tothe car park (Map P1) entrance, Norway spruce isthe prominent species. Norway spruce is a Europeanspecies and was the traditional Christmas treealthough it is rarely used now as it sheds its needlesshortly after felling unlike species such noble fir.Norway spruce may have been introduced to Ireland500 years ago but it is believed that it made a briefappearance here during the last interglacial period.

Car parking to facilitate disabled users (Map P2) is located 200 m further along the trail. This walk passes the Coillte research laborato-ry where on the left hand side – up on the bank – there are Montereypine. This species is native to a small area around Monterey in south-ern California and a group of islands off theMexican and Californian coasts. It growsextremely fast, has long needles (in groups ofthree) and very large cones.While it is notwidely planted in Ireland there are plentyexamples of trees that grow rapidly hereand a number have attained girths of up to 9 metres.

TYPICAL TREE SPECIES IN MOUNT KENNEDY

3

Sweet chestnutBeech

European larch

Norway spruce

Monterey pine

4

The River Walk

The River Walk is divided into three sections: the surfaced trail; a short looped walk; and a walk to thewestern entrance.The surfaced trail is maintained topromote access to the wood for mobility impaired visi-tors.There are a number of resting areas along the trail,as indicated B on the map.

The tree species in this area aretypical of old estates and wood-lands that were planted from theseventeenth century. They includebeech and Spanish or sweet chestnut.

Beech has beautiful bright greenfoliage in spring and both specieshave spectacular autumnal goldenand russet colours.They produce

excellent wood, ideal for furniture, flooring and turnery.The nuts ofsweet chestnut are edible unlike those of horse chestnut.This is agood area to listen to the sounds of the forest.The Altidore River isthe prevailing sound for most of the walk but listen out for the soundof animals at dusk or the many songbirds attracted to Mount Kennedybecause of its rich variety of flora.

Mount Kennedy Wood has a wheelchair-friendly trail begin-ning at the River Walk (Map P2). There are also a number ofwheelchair bays and resting areas (top right).

5

About 200 metres from theentrance the visitor has theoption of completing theshort loop walk which isabout 600 metres before itrejoins the Woodland Walknear a small stand of cherry.These trees were planted byCoillte to assess the per-formance of different provenances of cherrytree. Cherry is a native species and producesbeautiful wood which isused for high qualityfurniture, wood turneryand wood carving.

The surfaced trail ends300 metres from theentrance at P2.The trail which continues some800 metres west from here along the Riverwalk, is an unsurfaced forest trail, in good con-dition and is relatively level.

The landscape along this part of the trailchanges as natural regeneration replaces thedense forest cover prevalent in the Woodland Walk.

Flora

In addition to 25 speciesof trees and shrubs, thereare over 75 species ofgrasses, ferns and flower-ing plants in MountKennedy Wood.

The woodland containssix different species offern and horsetail (right)along with an abundanceof plants such as rose-bay, willowherb, purpleloosestrife,meadowsweet(top right), lords andladies, herb Robert(below), dog violet andshepherd’s purse.

The changing woodland

The changing face of MountKennedy Wood is very much in evi-dence in the final 800 metres of theRiver Walk.The wood is largely theresult of past human planting, char-acterised by two different plantingregimes: the old estate planting andthe later public planting by theForest Service and more recentlyby Coillte. The remnants of the oldNewtownmountkennedy Estateinclude mixed broadleaved treesboth native and naturalised such asash, beech and sweet chestnut.Later, when the Forest Serviceacquired the wood, coniferousspecies were introduced fromaround the world. Many of thesespecies were planted in the nearbyAvondale arboretum and speciestrial plots around 1904.These grewextremely well in Irish conditionsand many were planted in MountKennedy including Japanese larch,Norway spruce and Western NorthAmerican natives such as Sitkaspruce and Monterey pine.

The woodland will again changeover the coming years as differentspecies slowly colonise this area.

Wildlife

The mixed species of flora attract a vari-ety of wild life to Mount Kennedy. Jays,blackbirds, blue and grey tits, treecreep-ers, coals, wren, rooks, long eared owlsand sparrow hawks are just a few of thebirds that can be seen and heard in thewood.

Mammals include pygmy shrew, redsquirrel, badger (below), stoat and foxes.The native red squirrel is also presentbut is in danger of being pushed out bythe non-native grey squirrel which causes damage to trees by stripping thebark of mainly broadleaves such assycamore and beech.

If you wish to see some of the batspecies, visit the wood at dusk or earlymorning and you may be lucky to spotpippestrelles, lieslers, daubentons, natter-ers or brown long-eared bats. The river-side areas also provide refuge for a vari-ety of butterflies such as red admiral,peacock, tortoiseshell, speckled wood,small green veined white and orange tip.

6

On the left (walking towards the western entrance)there is natural regeneration of a number of speciessuch as ash, mountain ash (or rowan) and birch whileon the right – across the river – for about 400metres a mature plantation of Norway spruce is pro-grammed for final or clearfelling in 2006. Clearfellinglooks unsightly during and immediately after harvest-

ing but vegetation and treespecies quickly encroach the area.The Norway spruce, planted orig-inally in the 1950s was thinned atvarious stages from year 20onwards.Thinning involves theregular removal of trees to improve growth andquality of remaining trees. Eventually when the for-est matures, the area is clearfelled and then refor-ested. Very often, the replacement crop is similarto the harvested crop but the Coillte forester herehas decided to replace it with a number of speciesthat are native to the area such as ash and alder.

The forest road ends at the western entrance. From here, walkers mayretrace their steps to the car park (Map P2) or follow the public roadback to Newtownmountkennedy village which is about 1.5 km fromhere.

The total walking distance in Mount Kennedy including loop walk is 3 km and while the terrain is fairly level, walkers should wear sturdyfootwear.

7

Mount Kennedy has a rich woodland understorey flora suchas holly and foxglove (above right) and buddleja (above left).

Woodland in transition –being replaced with

– Norway spruce broadleaves

Shaping Mount Kennedy

Mount Kennedy Wood is adjacent to the County Wicklow village ofNewtownmountkennedy. The woodland trail occupies a narrow val-ley between two hills, which have an altitude of between 110 and120 m.The primary rock beneath the thin layer of soil comprisesgreywacke, shale and quartzite.The sediments, which make up theserocks, were laid down many millions of years ago when this areawas covered with water – the Irish Sea is only 5 km from the wood.Over time the landscape was sculpted as rocks were pushed up andlow-lying ground was gouged out by later glaciations.The melt waterleft a gravel drift which characterises the relatively free-draining soilsof Mount Kennedy.These soils are primarily composed of local shaleand sandstone, which were easily eroded by the force of the advanc-ing ice sheet.The higher ground to the west and north (especiallythe Sugarloaf Mountain) which are largely composed of hardquartzite, were more resistant to erosion.

The village itself was established in the mid-eighteenth century bythe Kennedy family. Featured in a Neville map dated 1760, the villagehad a turbulent early history. Agrarian and political unrest came toa head in 1798 when the village was attacked on May 30 by a groupof poorly armed members of the United Irishmen. They were rout-ed by the Yeomen and close to 100 were killed.

The Metal Spinners factory was the biggest employer from the1950s to the 1970s.The village has retained much of its charm sinceit was bypassed by the N11 dual carriageway.The amenity develop-ment of Mount Kennedy Wood illustrates the importance of treesand forests in community life and the vast potential of wood as arenewable resource. The Coillte headquarters, located to the northof the village demonstrates a new confidence in Irish grown woodas a creative and versatile building material.

This project is funded by the Forest Service NeighbourWoodScheme in association with Wicklow County Council. It is managedby Coillte in co-operation with Newtownmountkennedy andDistrict Tidy Towns Committee.

Rathnew

Ashford

R761

R750

R763

R764

Roundwood

Newtownmountkennedy

MOUNTKENNEDY

Greystones

Enniskerry

Delgany

Kilcoole

WICKLOW

BRAY

N 11

N 11

TO DUBLIN

TO WEXFORD

N 11

M 50

M 11

How to get there

Mount Kennedy Wood is situatedclose to the village of Newtown-mountkennedy just off the N11. It is32 km south of Dublin and midway between Wicklow and Bray.