Overview
The Pale earthwork at Balally is easy to walk straight past: a low bank in a housing estate in south Dublin, no more than waist-high when it was recorded. It is not much to look at, and that is the honest truth of the place. There is no wall, no tower, just a low, flat-topped ridge in the ground that you have to know to read. It is one of the surviving earthworks associated with the medieval Pale, and once you can pick it out, it holds the attention. Treat it as a short neighbourhood stop if you are interested in the archaeology.
The Pale was the part of Ireland kept under direct English administration in the late Middle Ages, shrunk by the 1400s to the four ‘obedient shires’ of Dublin, Kildare, Meath and Louth. Inside it, English common law ran; outside, the Brehon law of the Gaelic lords held. The border was marked by an earthwork, a ditch and bank palisaded in places, first dug when trenches were ordered along the frontier in 1454, and formally mandated by the 1494 parliament of Sir Edward Poynings. It never fully stopped a raid, but it was the physical trace of the frontier. The Pale’s boundary changed over time, and the bank at Balally records only one part of it.
The bank at Balally
The 2000 excavation report records a bank about 220 metres long before the motorway works. That recorded length describes the earthwork before that work, not what you can see today. The southern stretch was incorporated into the layout of the Kilcross housing estate, and the excavation investigated the section affected by the road. The northern part was recorded, then cut, during the building of the South-Eastern Motorway.
As recorded, the bank was flat-topped, 3 to 4 metres wide on top and 6 metres at the base, standing 1 to 1.2 metres high, with a shallow fosse around 2 metres wide on each side.
The best detail comes from the 2000 excavation. Alongside the ditch, archaeologists found a cobbled trackway with cart-wheel ruts still visible in the stones, and the foundation trench of a mortar-and-granite wall. The flat top of a Pale bank was often reused as a dry, level path in medieval and later times, which is part of how these stretches survived at all.
Getting there
Balally is on the Luas Green Line, not the DART. Check the street route to Kilcross before setting out on foot, and check current bus routes with the operators if you prefer to come by bus. The Luas is the simplest way to arrive; follow any parking signs and respect residents’ streets if you drive.
In Kilcross, look for the low ridge from public streets and paths and respect residential boundaries. Come in low light, early morning or late afternoon, and out of the growing season, when long shadows and short grass make the bank and ditch far easier to pick out against the ground.
Nearby
A little further south, Carrickmines has the remains of a medieval castle, uncovered during the M50 works, which gives more context to how this frontier was held and fought over.