The Dodder
The River Dodder is one of Dublin’s best known and most important rivers. The river rises in the Dublin Mountains and in its upper reaches it forms a reservoir system which is an integral part of the water supply to Dublin. It flows down through the suburban areas of Tallaght and Rathfarnham and through the city areas of Donnybrook and Ballsbridge before discharging into the Liffey Estuary at Ringsend. The lower section of the river is tidal up to Ballsbridge. There are a number of tributaries draining into the River Dodder with the significant ones being the Tallaght Stream, the Owendoher, the Whitechurch, the Little Dargle and the Dundrum Slang. The Dodder’s surrounding parklands are an extremely important amenity to Dublin and the river is widely used by fishermen and a variety of sporting and recreational interests over its 26 Km long course.
Dodder Ramble
This cache is one of a series under the banner of “Dodder Ramble”. Hopefully it will complement the many existing caches along the Dodder and attract Geocachers to take a ramble along its banks and appreciate this terrific public amenity.
Orwell Park
Opposite the triumphal arch, one of the gateways to Rathfarnham Castle, a footbridge was built in 1950 to give access to Orwell Park. The park was developed on land acquired from the Bewley family – whose Jersey cattle grazed there and supplied milk for the Bewley cafés.
A quarry pond, ten metres deep, was filled in and became tennis courts when the High School moved to the estate. The mill stream flowed above and behind the quarry pond and then along the base of the cliff which curves away from the present bed of the main river. The park occupies the flood plain in between.
This is marked as a ’drying green’ on old maps and was protected from floods by the long dyke which runs a little way back from the river for most of the way to Orwell bridge. In spite of it, the field used to be flooded periodically until the crest of Rathfarnham Weir was lowered in the 1930s. The dyke has been cut or worn away in places and, close to the footbridge, the lime kiln which now serves as a shed, was built into it. You can peep in behind the locked door to see the brick-arch structure within the kiln.
Blocks of limestone from the quarry were burned in the kiln to form the dangerously corrosive ‘quicklime’ (calcium oxide). The quicklime was then placed in heaps on the ground so that the rain could soak it, slaking its thirst and yielding the hydroxide, ‘slaked lime’. In this form it could be handled more safely and spread on the ground to improve the soil. Nowadays limestone is pulverised mechanically and supplied as ‘ground limestone’ so the kilns have all but disappeared from the countryside. Since the park was opened sixty years ago, the lime kiln has changed its status from a commonplace object to an important relic of industrial archaeology.
The Cache: The cache is a small camouflaged bison tube hidden close to the riverbank. Closest parking is on Orwell Road adjacent to Mount Carmel hospital and public transport is the Luas Green line (Windy Arbour) and the no. 14 bus (Mount Carmel).