THE DROMOLAND CASTLE MEGALOCEROS GIGANTEUS.

A set of prehistoric Giant Irish Deer antlers and skull, c. 12,000 - 8,000 BC.

Span width c.2.9m.

 

Provenance: The Clan OBrien at Dromoland...

THE DROMOLAND CASTLE MEGALOCEROS GIGANTEUS.

A set of prehistoric Giant Irish Deer antlers and skull, c. 12,000 - 8,000 BC.

Span width c.2.9m.

 

Provenance: The Clan OBrien at Dromoland Castle from the late 17th century, thence by descent to the current Lord Inchiquin, 18th Baron. On loan to Bunratty Castle from 1962.

 

The Giant Deer or Megaloceros giganteus was, as the Latin name suggests, far and away the largest deer that ever lived and examples are recorded as having been 8 long, from head to tail and standing 7 tall at their shoulders. They originated during the Pleistocene Period of the Great Ice Age and roamed from Ireland in the west to Siberia in the east. It is thought that the climatic changes following the Ice Age may have contributed to their eventual demise and ultimately its extinction.

 

The high calcium carbonate content of the marl which underlies bogland is conducive to the preservation of bones hence the concentration of remains of the Giant Irish Deer discovered in counties Waterford, Cork and Clare over the centuries. Many of these antlers, following an age-old fashion, featured in baronial banquet halls. Anne Crookshank and the Knight of Glin in The Watercolours of Ireland, (Barrie & Jenkins, 1994) noted that :

 

From as far back as 1586 there is an accurately portrayed sketch, now in the National Museum of Ireland, recording the discovery of the head and antlers of an extinct Irish Giant Deer found in that year and preserved by Adam Loftus, Irelands Lord Chancellor, who built Rathfarnham Castle in the 1580s. In Loftuss letter of 27th September 1597 to Sir Robert Cecil, Queen Elizabeths all-powerful Secretary of State, in which he was planning to send the head to Cecil, he describes it as follows: the rare greatness of it made me. set (it) up in the hall of a poor house which I built here.

 

 

 

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