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Dr Ciarán McDonnell
Independent Archaeological Researcher

​A hard Pale or a soft Pale? The Pale ditch and border identities in medieval Ireland

The Pale was the name given to the zone of English control in medieval Ireland, centred on the city of Dublin. Inspired by the English Pale of Calais, the Pale in Ireland represented the precarious position of Norman and later English power in the east of the island. The Pale was not a fixed entity and changed in form and function over the following centuries. The Pale grew as Anglo-Irish lords built castles and established market towns, in order to help bring trade and civilisation to the Irish whilst offering independent power far from royal attention in England.
 
This paper explores how the Pale came under increasing pressure in the 14th century, political and economic pressure forcing the colony to contract. The Gaelic Irish made frequent raids into English territory and the government was forced to order the construction of a physical or ‘hard’ border. Even today glimpses of this may be seen in parts of Meath, Kildare and Dublin, usually in the form of a bank and double ditch  
 
Incorporating history, archaeology and sociology, this paper examines how the Pale changed and evolved as local, national and international pressures acted upon it. Liminal spaces such as borders offer a wealth of information, illustrating how different societies and social identities interact. The term ‘beyond the Pale’ has come to represent something that is beyond the norms of civilised behaviour, yet in reality the lines between the supposedly civilised settlers and the ‘wild Irish’ are as blurred as the physical border that supposedly divided them. This paper concludes with a comparison between the border of the Pale and the modern Irish border in the 20th century, and how hard borders and soft borders work in theory, and in reality.

Ciarán McDonnell is a historian and archaeologist from Co. Meath. His 2013 PhD from Maynooth University examined Irish identity in the British military during the French Revolutionary Wars (1793-1802). In 2014 he was a Jacobite Studies Trust Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research (University of London) investigating Franco-Irish officers during the French Revolution. He has worked at the Blackfriary Archaeology Field School in Trim, taught in UCD and Maynooth University, and worked as a tour guide for OPW.
Ciarán currently works for Meath County Council, where he promotes heritage tourism and community engagement. He has published both locally and internationally on topics from the medieval to modern period (in particular the Crusades, Jacobitism and the Age of Revolution). He is interested in how military history relates to the wider society and how ‘Irish’ identity has evolved over the centuries.
He has taken part in a number of community and commercial archaeology projects, including excavations at the Blackfriary Archaeology Field School, Swords Castle, Bremore Castle and Drummanagh, Newgrange Farm and the Rosemarkie Caves Project in Scotland. For more details on publications and research see https://independent.academia.edu/CiaránMcDonnell
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