Hill of Slane

The Hill of Slane is a landmark above the Boyne Valley, commanding views toward Brú na Bóinne, the Hill of Tara, and the wider Meath landscape. Its summit brings together an ancient mound, medieval church and friary ruins, and traditions linked with the Fir Bolg king Sláine and Saint Patrick: a place where prehistoric memory and Christian story meet on one ridge.

The Hill of Slane, north of Slane Village, rises about 158 meters (518 feet) above the surrounding country. In Irish tradition it is Dumha Sláine. In the Metrical Dindshenchas, the Fir Bolg king Sláine mac Dela was said to have been buried here, in a place earlier called Druim Fuar that came to be known in his memory as Dumha Sláine. A tree-covered mound still crowns the hill. It was later reshaped or reused as an Anglo-Norman motte, and its earliest date remains uncertain. One tradition even links Sláine with clearing woodland around the Brug when the great mounds of Newgrange, Knowth, and Dowth were built, tying this high ridge to the sacred landscape visible below.

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Whatever the mound's true origin, Slane's position explains its lasting importance. It is both vantage point and beacon. From the summit, fires and towers could be seen across a remarkable stretch of country. The hill may also have been chosen for an early Christian foundation because of an existing sacred focus, the remains of which may include two standing stones in the burial ground. Muirchu moccu Machtheni, in his highly mythologized seventh century Life of Patrick, says that St. Patrick lit a Paschal fire on this hilltop in 433 CE in defiance of the High King Laoire, who forbade any other fires while a festival fire was burning on the Hill of Tara.

The story sets two hills against each other: the new Christian flame at Slane and the royal authority of Tara to the south. Precise historical details are hard to fix, and later writers shaped Patrick's mission into a powerful symbolic narrative. Yet the choice of Slane makes geographical sense. A great fire here would have been visible not only from Tara, about 16 kilometers (10 miles) away, but also across the monuments of Brú na Bóinne. Historians and archaeologists often suggest that Muirchu moved to Slane a fire lit elsewhere, with Brú na Bóinne or Knowth among the candidates. According to Muirchu, Laoire was so impressed by Patrick's devotion that, despite his defiance (or perhaps because of it), he let him continue his missionary work in Ireland. It is somewhat more certain that Patrick appointed a bishop of Slane, Saint Erc.

The Hill of Slane remained a center of religion and learning for many centuries after St. Patrick. The ruins of a friary church and college can be seen on the top of the hill. It is known that Slane Friary was restored in 1512. The ruins include a 19-meter (62 feet) high early gothic tower. The friary was abandoned in 1723. The medieval tower, church, graveyard, and college now dominate the summit. They do not erase the hill's earlier identity. Instead they show how a place of older power was taken up and reinterpreted within Christian Ireland. From here, different ages of sacred Ireland remain visible to one another: the mound and the long views belong to a much older story than the stone ruins that crown them today.

On the west side of the hill there are the remains of a twelfth century Norman motte and bailey, built by Richard Fleming in the 1170s. This was the seat of the Flemings of Slane, barons of Slane. The Flemings moved to a castle on the left bank of the River Boyne, the current location of Slane Castle. The Flemings were lords of Slane from the twelfth century until seventeenth century, when the Conyngham family replaced them as lords of Slane during the Williamite Confiscations.

The Hill of Slane - An Aerial View

The Hill of Slane - A Powerful Place

The 158 m (518 feet) high Hill of Slane is just a kilometer (0.6 miles) or so north of Slane Village and 15 km (9 miles) north of the Hill of Tara. It was the site of a famous (or infamous) conflagration, the fiery contest between a Christian missionary and native Irish pagans in 433 CE. Ireland was a country of warring tribes, based on the Celtic social pattern of hierarchy and status. Religious leaders called Druids provided guidance to the kings and performed important rituals. Into this pagan world came St Patrick, sent if not by God then by the nearest thing on earth: the Pope in Rome.

At the spring equinox, the ruling High King always lit a fire on the Hill of Tara, the religious-political center of Ireland. From there the flame would spread around Ireland. In 433 CE the command went out that no one, on pain of death, was to light a hilltop fire before the High King Laoghaire lit his. Enter Saint Patrick, who saw his opportunity to make an inflammatory statement. He climbed up to the top of the Hill of Slane (or so the legend goes, though historians and archaeologists claim he climbed Brú na Bóinne or Knowth instead) and stole the show, lighting his Paschal fire before that of the High King. The enraged king knew the fire was a direct challenge to his authority. He rode to Slane (or maybe he had Patrick brought to Tara) and a confrontation took place.

Legend says that the King Laoghaire's irate Druids demanded the fire of Christianity be extinguished that very night or else it would burn forever. They challenged St Patrick to magical battle but could not defeat him. As a result, the king permitted his followers to become converts. At least one did: Erc. St Patrick rewarded St Erc by naming him bishop of Slane, and on the now-Christian Hill of Slane he established a school. A local church holds an annual ceremony on the hill with a small fire to commemorate the event.

Although Patrick won the battle, he may not have won the war. Over the centuries, a unique Celtic Christianity developed, influenced by the Desert Father and Egyptian Coptic Christianity, that embraced isolated, ascetic monastic life such as found on Skellig Michael, a craggy, isolated island 10 km (6 miles) off the southwest shore of Ireland.

Celtic Christianity encouraged far-flung missionary activities and maintained a close relationship with the natural world. Irish Christianity lasted at least until the twelfth century, when Norman England and Rome-administered Catholicism conquered the Emerald Isle. It was never completely extinguished, and in recent decades it has experienced a renascence.

The Hill of Slane has other claims to fame than Patrick's Paschal flame. The so-called motte on the western side, inaccessible and hidden in the trees, is said to be the remains of the 1170s fortification of Richard le Flemyng of Flanders. It is probably instead the ancient burial mound of the Fir Bolg king Sláine, who legend claims is buried there.

A ruined Franciscan church and college from the sixteenth century still survive on the hill. St Erc's original foundation and his remains may lie to the south of the present church or possibly in the ruined "mortuary house" in the graveyard. Tradition says that the two gable ends, with large upright rectangle stone end-blocks, are the remains of Erc's shrine. These standing stones may be the remains of a megalithic construction that was Christianized as was the Hill of Slane. As late as the twentieth century, the shrine was visited as part of local burial rites.

The Hill of Slane is intervisible with Newgrange and Knowth, about 5 km (3 miles) to the east. On a clear day you can see Drogheda, the Irish Sea, and the Wicklow Mountains to the south. The Hill of Slane is indeed a powerful place.