The Hellfire Club Book

This interactive publication Sacred Skies and Earthly Sinners, the Hellfire Club Archaeological Project, brings together all of the results of the excavation of the passage tomb DU025-001001, that took place in October 2016. The excavation was carried out as part of the Hellfire Club Archaeological Project, a not-for-profit research project by Abarta Heritage with funding and support from South Dublin County Council and Coillte.

This web-reader is designed to help you navigate through the publication, with quick links in the contents that allows you to easily get to the information that matters to you most.  We have also broken down elements of this publication into individual web pages.  However, these web pages are only designed to be brief synopses of the individual sections, so you will always find more detail in the publication.

The publication is fully illustrated, and contains a number of videos.  We hope you enjoy it, and we’d love it if you’d consider sharing this page with anyone you think might be interested.

We launched Abarta Heritage in 2012, in order to raise awareness and engagement with Irish archaeology, history, heritage and folklore, in a sense to try to amplify archaeology.  However, as well as attempting to relate the story of the site, this publication also attempts to provide for the vital technical aspects of an archaeological report, and therefore it is set out in accordance with a traditional report format.

It can be difficult to balance between the technical requirements of a formal report and accessibility, and it may take some refinement.  We would love to know what you thought worked and what you feel could be refined or changed, so we welcome feedback from all parties. If you have suggestions please do not hesitate to get in touch via our contact page.

Finally, it is important to say that a publication such as this is not down to the work of an individual, it is the product of a collaboration with a number of people, particularly the excavation crew, the specialists who contributed to this document as well as South Dublin County Council, Coillte, the Dublin Mountains Partnership, UCD School of Archaeology, the National Museum of Ireland and the National Monuments Service.  You can find the full list of those who contributed in the Acknowledgements section of the publication, but I do wish to particularly thank Sara Nylund, who designed and implemented this interactive document.