A Brook in the City
The brook was thrown
Deep in a sewer dungeon under stone
In fetid darkness still to live and run -
And all for nothing it had ever done
Except forget to go in fear perhaps,
No one would know except for ancient maps
That such a brook ran water
Robert Frost
Kilmacud Stream
You won't see the Kilmacud Stream, as it is culverted along its entire length. Perhaps, in a rare lull in the traffic, you may hear the sound of water flowing underground directly beneath your feet. So changed is the area since the 1960s, it will take some effort of imagination to conjure up the tranquil rural landscape that existed here within living memory.
At the cache location, you are standing where once stood the gate lodge of Kilmacud House, and the entrance of a long tree-lined avenue sweeping up to the big house itself. What is now Lakelands Estate was once the grounds of Lakelands House, featuring a huge ornamental lake of 1 acre. Kilmacud Stream (also known as Daly's Stream) ran down through the fields from a sluice at the exit of the lake, turning east to run alongside the line of Lower Kilmacud Road, on the south side of the road. Where the Mill House pub now stands (its name surely recalling some long-forgotten mill), the old maps show a series of falls and even a quarter-acre lake with a little wooded island. The stream flowed down through the village and across the old Dublin-Bray coach road before joining up with the Carysfort-Maretimo stream in the grounds of Stillorgan Park House. Now that the area has been taken over by suburbia, the little river flows unseen beneath houses and front gardens, schools, shops and roads.
Access
There is car parking available nearby in the overflow car park of Stillorgan shopping centre and in the car park of the Mill House pub. Buses serving Stillorgan village include the 46A, 75 and 11.
The Cache
The cache is a magnetic container attached to a green metal object. Please retrieve and return with care because this is a busy location with lots of pedestrians passing by.