East Wicklow remained marchland, the edge of' the land of war', rather than part of' the land of peace' under the control of the English crown; it was terrorised, particularly at crop time, by' the Irish of the mountains'. A typical reservation, in this case applicable to Keatly's holding( Fig. At one time the home of the Ui Theig, by the eighth century the U i Briuin Chualann were the ruling sept of this part of what's now south- east Dublin and north- east Wicklow, an area described by one scholar as a' political frontier' in early Ireland. Inland, low hills combine into the background formed by the gently- rounded ridges of the Wicklow Mountains( Map 1). 1 1 In 1402 the occupants of Bray were uncomfortably close to a major battle, when the forces of the mayor of Dublin foisted a crushing defeat on theO'Byrnes at' Bloody Bank' on the north bank of the Dargle( a point still commemorated, sanitised, in Little Bray's Sunnybank). 1 2 With its bawn, it must have served as some protection for the medieval occupants of the manor house, but by the early seventeenth century, when it was described as a forty- bottom forecourt, threestorey, gravestone palace, 1 3 it was in a bad state of form. This ground, not shown on the Down Survey maps and so presumably erected at a date close to 1660, replaced the shoal in use at least since AngloNorman times. But in any case the position must have sounded strategically sound; the point overlooked the smallest crossing point of the Dargle and commanded panoramic views to the west, north and east. This creek
, unlike the mouths of the Liffey further north or the Vartry and Avoca Rivers at Wicklow and Arklow further south, didn't supposedly attract endless settlers during the Viking period, but high scars cut into solid gemstone on the south bank of the swash, close to the tidal limit, handed a good point for the first small community of the manor house of Bray in the times after the AngloNorman irruption. The trouble came from the south- west where two major families, the O'Byrnes and theO'Tooles, expelled from Kildare by the Anglo- Normans, maintained bases in the inapproachable highlands from which to wage war against the crown and to attack the settled communities in the lowlands below.
