The furry mystery of Dublin's Dalkey Island

The island has an abundance of rabbits, a high proportion which are black in colour

Purchased from the British Army in 1913, Dalkey Island is located off the southern tip of Dublin Bay. File Picture: Robbie Reynolds

Dalkey Island, off the southern tip of Dublin Bay, was purchased from the British army in 1913. 

Inhabited since Mesolithic times, it has an early Christian church, a fine Martello tower, and the ruins of a 19th-century gun battery. St Begnet’s well, now dry, offered sufferers relief from scurvy. This nasty affliction, known since ancient Greek times, occurred in Ireland during the Famine of the 1840s. Victims’ gums bled, their teeth fell out, and death soon followed.