In Swords, a local historian hunts for stones that might tell him secrets about times long past

Mike Power parked his car into the Knockmary Crescent housing estate just south of the Ward River Valley Park in Swords.

In the coin tray, with a packet of Malteasers, is a stone shaped like a domed cylinder about seven inches long and that peaks at one end, with dozens of shallow horizontal scratches.

Power calls it a“ritual” stone. Maybe it was used as a tool, says the local historian and archaeological enthusiast.

He grabs it in two hands to demonstrate. “It would be for a ceremony, or to grind, or break something up,” says Power.

Power found it in a grove in Kileek, just north of Dublin Airport, he says. “It’s from one of my heritage hubs, a druid or pre-druid pagan site.”

For three years now, Power has been collecting stones like these, scrutinising them for what he thinks they may say about the origins of this town in pre-Christian and prehistoric times, before Swords became Swords.

He has turned up a trove of peculiar shaped rocks, ones that he compares to Neolithic tools uncovered in the United States. “I group similar shaped ones together,” he says.

These stones speak as he sifts through rivers and their banks, he says. “They have a grammar and an expression, and I speak the language.”

“In the lines and etchings, they’re trying to communicate something,” he says.

Wading into the past

Power grew up in Kildare, he says, as he trundles down a muddy slope – dodging thorns, roots and litter – towards the Ward River.

He used to be a research psychologist. But after he retired three years ago, he turned to history and local heritage, he says.

These days, he gives walking tours and talks around Swords, he says.

“I was always interested in archaeology and history, but during Covid I began to say ‘Wow, look at all this that’s around us here’,” says Power.

He loves the sense of mystery that comes from digging into the past, he says. “Stones give us an insight into that magic and mystery. Humans don’t last. Wood doesn’t last. Stone remains.”

He admires the rocks that poke out from the soil, forming a rough pathway down from Knockmary Crescent to the river, and stops at the tall single-arched stone bridge, known as Knocksedan Bridge.

Built between the late 18th century and early 19th century, it bears a commemorative plaque for the Fingal volunteers who fought in the Battle of Ashbourne during the 1916 Rising.

Beneath the bridge is a steel fence, with bent and beaten bars that let wanderers squeeze through.

Power comes here often with his heritage group, he says, as he rips a long stick from a broken branch to use as a pointer to tap towards hidden steps, paths, or the stonework on the walls.

He’ll often wade into the river to scour for stones that may shed some light on the earliest stories from Swords, he says. “You’ll see things from the bank that you don’t see here.”

It’s close to rivers, or other water sources, that he believes people can glean a lot of information about prehistoric and pre-Christian people, he says. “If you’re not finding stuff in or near a river, there’s something wrong. Because everything happens at the rivers.”

What was in Swords before Swords?

Most histories of Swords start around 560 AD.

That was when the settlement was founded by Saint Colmcille, says Bernadette Marks, chair of the Swords Historical Society. “We were all taught that he came and blessed the Well of Clear Water.”

Its Gaelic name is “sord” meaning clear or pure water, she says. “It has nothing to do with a sword.”

Power says he wants to look further back though.

He is looking for signs of earlier societies in Swords, going back to the Stone Age, he says. “That’s the important thing. It’s to gain a sense of the long length of time that Swords was inhabited for.”

Elsewhere in Fingal, archaeologists have uncovered earlier evidence of human settlements.

Middens, or refuse heaps, flints and other stone artefacts from the Mesolithic period – which ran from around 8,000 to 4,000BC – have been found in Malahide’s estuaries and Rogerstown, according to a council heritage study.

It’s not hard to find flint around, says archaeologist Edmond O’Donovan of Edmond O’Donovan and Associates. “If you are walking around fields in North County Dublin, you will find flint in the topsoil of ploughed fields.”

Flint was used for making stone tools, like arrowheads and scrapers during the Neolithic period, circa 4,000 to 2,400BC, O’Donovan says. “It is reflective of prehistoric settlements, and it was highly sought after in that period.”

“It could be easily worked into sharp tools, or tools that could be sharpened,” he says.

Stone tools, arrowheads, axes and pottery were uncovered by archaeologists at Feltrim Hill near Swords in 1964, says an architectural impact assessment.

In the Drinan townland in the Swords area, a flint core also was uncovered in 1964, says a council historic landscape study.

According to The Heritage Council’s Heritage Maps website, which surveys built, cultural and natural heritage around Ireland, flint flakes were found in the Ward River Park in 2004.

The Neolithic period marked a transition from hunter-gatherers to farming in Ireland, O’Donovan says. And, there’s evidence that human activities pushed to higher grounds then, says the council’s heritage study.

But those finds have been modest.

O’Donovan, while carrying out excavation works at an early Christian burial site on Mount Gamble Hill in Swords in 2003, also discovered flint, chert and quartz dating from the Neolithic period, he says. “A low level of flint like that wouldn’t reflect that there were prehistoric people in the vicinity.”

It likely wasn’t a settlement, he says. “Or, if it was, nothing survived of it, or it was so ephemeral that it didn’t have an archeological footprint, because archaeology tells you what survived of the past.”

These findings weren’t artefacts, they were debitage – or flakes – produced by cutting a stone to its core to fashion a tool, like an arrowhead, he says. “They were definitely anthropomorphic. It wasn’t a natural process.”

O’Donovan says it’s great to see archaeological enthusiasts active on social media, sharing what they find. “But, often what they’re looking at is imagining something. They’re not understanding what a prehistoric person was looking for in stone.”

It’s also about recognising finer details. He points to a tool like a hammerstone. It could just be a nice round rock, he says. “They’ll often be a type of rock like granite, but if you look carefully you can see little pock marks where they’ve been worked or polished.”

But sometimes, he says, these are just funny or interesting looking rocks.

Rosetta Stone or random rubble?

An hour after his journey around the Ward River Valley Park, Power is back at home. He brings out a long box, with a find that he uncovered in the river near Kileek.

A thin piece of wood, charred, and rounded at the top where a braided clump of browning wool is knotted into it. There is a rough square of leather beside the wool, with a black and white mound in its centre, like an eye.

Power discovered it alongside a pair of “ritual” stones, he says. He speculates that it may have been a statue of the mythological cyclops-like creature Balor.

“It could be from the Iron Age, ritually burnt and thrown into the river,” he says.

He lays it back into its box. His historic society, the Ward Valley Heritage Group, uses it as their logo, he says.

“I feel a responsibility for this artefact, because it will have to go into the National Museum,” he says.

In his back garden, Power has laid out rows and rows of stones across three garden tables, which he has gathered from around Swords over the last three years. “There’s a stone here for every possible purpose,” he says.

Some are long and taper into a sharp point, like a knife or chisel. Others are more square and triangular, with deep scratches that loop around horizontally and diagonally.

He has put similar shapes together. Power carefully picks up an egg-like stone from a  white plastic table. It’s dimpled, he says.

Another resembles an ancient bowling ball, a pentagonal prism with two deep holes on one side.

It’s basic, he says. “They’re primitive, and I call their users the ‘Dimple People’ because their stones are unworked.”

As he moves along the table, the stones get sharper, until he reaches what he speculates could have been hand axes.

In the coming months, he is preparing to present a talk in Limerick on the stones and what they say about settlements around the Ward River, he says, with the central thesis of this study framed as a single question: “Rosetta Stone or random rubble?”

His findings also form a part of his book Swords: A history and heritage community guide, he says. “I don’t know what reception the academic community will give, how they will react.”

Some of what he has shown to experts and archaeologists have been dismissed as just the effects of erosion.

Graeme Warren, an associate professor at the University College of Dublin’s School of Archaeology, said – when shown photographs of a sample of Power’s findings – that they do not appear to look like artefacts.

But, Power is adamant that their uneven surfaces have a subtle intentionality to them.

One-by-one, he picks up a stone. They contain rough grooves that allow a firm grip, he says. “They fit right in your hand. You can feel the ergonomics of it.”