Solitary demise of an historic forest

I WAS UP at the Coronation Plantation in Co Wicklow recently. For anyone who doesn’t know the area, it’s in the valley of the upper Liffey to the west of the Sally Gap and it doesn’t look in the least bit like a plantation.

What you see from the road is a brown hillside of bracken and heather dotted with irregular groves of Scots pine. It’s a very attractive sight.

It was a forestry plantation once, one of the earliest in Ireland — the coronation it commemorates is that of William IV of England in 1831. But it never flourished and it was never finished.