The Oak Avenue of Corkagh

An avenue of oaks in Corkagh Park once led somewhere: to a country house that no longer exists. Oak Avenue was the main approach to Corkagh House, seat of the Finlay and Colley families from the 18th century until the last of the estate's two big houses burned down in the late 1970s. Some of the oaks that lined that approach are still standing, over two hundred years old, planted long before the fire and long before Dublin City Council opened the wider 300 acre demesne to the public in 1986. New oaks have been planted alongside the survivors since, close enough in age that telling the two generations apart takes a trained eye rather than a glance. Archaeologists working on the park's masterplan turned up the foundations of a medieval castle and a moated site here in 2023, a reminder that people have been building and rebuilding on this ground since at least 1326, when Corkagh first appears in the records as part of the Archbishop of Dublin's manor. The oaks are the one part of that long history still doing the job they always did: marking a way in.