A Food History of Maynooth (Part 1)
Mesolthic to Iron Age
Do you ever think about the food history of your childhood town or the place where you grew up? Of all that concealed culinary history, of all that food buried under the detritus of time. Though I wasn’t born in Maynooth, I lived there between the years 1982 and 1999. Thus, most of my formative years took place there.
I first began cooking in the College in Maynooth at the age of fifteen and then took my first chef job in an Italian restaurant called Donatello’s in 1995. Little did I know that this restaurant, whose co-owner and head chef was from Napoli, would contribute to my lasting love of food as a gift of Irish hospitality.
To be honest, I rarely thought about Maynooth’s food history. Of course, I knew of the castle, the Fitzgerald family and Carton House, which was constructed in the late 17th. I was sure these places had a food history, but I didn’t know exactly how this related to me and my own culinary excavations.
It wasn’t until I was writing The Irish Cookbook (2020) that I came across an archaeological paper on Maynooth Castle that revealed seal remains indicated the animal was consumed during feasts on the site. The number of seal carcasses demonstrated that it wasn’t just a once off event and given the distance Maynooth is from the sea (about 30km), there was some intent behind the transportation of the seals.
But surely there was more to food history to Maynooth. When had people arrived there? What had they eaten?
Maynooth, for those who don’t know, is a historic town located in Co. Kildare, Ireland. It has a rich food culture shaped by centuries of social and economic change. From early medieval farming and monastic traditions to the grand feasts of Maynooth Castle and Carton house, and from 19th-century seminary dining halls to today’s vibrant restaurants and cafés, the evolution of food in Maynooth reflects our broader food Irish history. Indeed, we can go back even further in time and uncover further food facts about this ancient town.
Early inhabitants of the Maynooth area lived on what the land could yield, primarily grains, dairy, and occasional meats. While there is no specific evidence of food directly from Maynooth during these early periods (around 8,000-9000 years ago), the archaeological record of early Ireland is consistent with the patterns found across the island. Maynooth, being in Co. Kildare in the east of Ireland, would have been part of the wider prehistoric landscape where people engaged in hunting, gathering, and early farming. The rich natural resources around rivers, lakes, and forests in the region would have provided a sustainable environment for these early people to thrive on wild game, fish, and plant resources.
Regarding Mesolithic (c.7000–4000 BC) sites, in the general Co. Kildare area, several prehistoric sites have been found, including tools and animal bones that suggest hunting and early farming practices. In Ardreigh (near Athy, South Kildare) a site on the Barrow River yielded evidence of some of Kildare’s earliest inhabitants. Mesolithic flint flakes, blades, and a polished stone axe (dating to around 7000–6000 BC) were found here.
The rivers and wetlands of Kildare (Barrow, Liffey, etc.) would have teemed with fish and waterfowl, providing ample protein. Indeed, evidence from Ireland and Britain shows Mesolithic groups heavily exploited fish. At inland sites they trapped eels or netted salmon and trout in rivers, complementing land hunting. Wild boar was an important quarry on the forested plain and cut marks on pig bones at Mesolithic sites indicate boar were a major food source for these hunter-gatherers. Smaller game and birds were also eaten. Species like wood pigeon, grouse, duck, and woodcock were hunted in the woodlands and wetland.
Plant foods were crucial as well. Charred hazelnut shells are among the most common finds on Mesolithic sites across Ireland, revealing that hazelnuts were a staple winter food that people roasted and ate in quantity. While there is a lack of specific Kildare/Maynooth excavation reporting nut shells, it is likely that local foragers gathered hazelnuts each autumn, as hazel woods were widespread. Hazelnuts were used as currency. Not only in Ireland, but all over Europe.
Other wild plant foods included berries, wild fruits, tubers, and even aquatic plants. Remarkably, archaeologists have identified water-lily seeds at some Mesolithic sites (for example, in the Midlands) which appear to have been toasted until they popped, a form of prehistoric popcorn. The Ardreigh study notes that early inhabitants collected a wide variety of plant foods including wild apples, pears, hazelnuts, and waterlily seeds. This diverse foraging ensured a balanced diet of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates while also demonstrating the settlers understood their landscape.
Without domesticated crops or pottery, Mesolithic people prepared their food with simple methods. Open-air hearths or campfires would have been the centre of cooking activity at seasonal camps. Though little remains of individual hearths in Kildare, often just scatters of charcoal and heat-cracked stone, archaeologies have inferred their presence from the charred food remains. Meat and fish were roasted over the fire on spits or racks, or stone-boiled in skin or wooden vessels, heating stones in a fire and dropping them into water to cook stews.
Roasting was certainly used for plant foods: hazelnuts were tossed into the embers to crack their shells, and water-lily seeds as noted were heated until they burst. The abundance of sharpened flints and blades found (e.g. flint flakes at Ardreigh) shows they had the tools to butcher game, fillet fish, and process plant materials. These hunter-gatherers moved camp with the seasons (following game migrations and ripening plants), so food storage would have been minimal.
However, they smoked or dried some meat or fish to preserve it for short periods. By the late Mesolithic, there are hints of intentional landscape management to enhance food supply: the use of polished stone axes to clear patches of forest. Chopping down trees opened glades that encouraged wild grasses and new growth, attracting deer and other herbivores for easier hunting.
Such practices show a sophisticated understanding of the environment and a gradual shift toward food production and what we would now call land management for agricultural purposes.
In Hunter-Gatherer Ireland: Making Connections in an Island World (2022), Graeme Warren emphasizes the importance of understanding the deep connections early Irish communities had with their environment. He writes:
Understanding the Mesolithic means paying attention to the animals, plants, spirits and things with which hunting and gathering groups formed kinship relationships and in collaboration with which they experienced life.
This perspective highlights that Mesolithic communities in Ireland were not merely surviving off the land but were deeply intertwined with it, forming relationships that went beyond mere utility. Warren's work considers these early societies as complex and spiritually connected to their world, challenging simplistic views of hunter-gatherer life. It would be wrong to think of these first settlers of Kildare and Maynooth as primitive. They were a sophisticated people in tune with their surroundings.
With the Neolithic revolution, farming and domestication of animals brought new foods into the diet, including cereals, legumes, and dairy products. The archaeological evidence from these periods in Ireland provides insight into the evolution of food sources, though specific evidence from Maynooth is harder to pinpoint due to the lack of well-preserved remains.
Only one specific site in Maynooth has been linked to early food evidence. Beneath the castle, archaeologists found a probable late Neolithic (c. 4000–2500BC) rectangular house structure (identified by characteristic slot-trench foundations) along with a small assemblage of prehistoric pottery and numerous animal, fish, and bird bones. These finds indicate that prehistoric people occupied the Maynooth area and were exploiting a range of food resources.
The house had the classic layout of a Neolithic timber house, suggesting that an early farming community was present at the confluence of the Lyreen and Joan Slade streams (see map below) long before the medieval town. The mix of fauna gives a small window into diet at this locale: even inland, fish (pike or eel from the streams) and wild birds were part of the menu, supplementing domestic livestock.
A small assemblage of prehistoric pottery was also found here, indicating they were using ceramic vessels to cook or store food. The Maynooth Castle excavations are significant because they provide direct evidence in Maynooth of late prehistoric food practices, such as farming and fishing.
The Neolithic period marks the introduction of agriculture to Ireland, and evidence in Co. Kildare reflects this transformative shift in food practices. Beginning around 4000 BC, mobile foraging gave way to a more settled lifestyle centered on farming, cultivating crops and managing domesticated livestock.
Archaeologically, this is evident in Kildare through the remains of permanent houses, new tool types, and food-related artifacts from this era. Communities established small farmsteads on arable lands such as the plains around Maynooth and the Curragh.
The excavation of several early Neolithic rectangular houses in Kildare is especially informative: at Corbally and Ballysaxhills (near Kilcullen, 25–30 km south of Maynooth), at least eight timber-built houses dating to the early 4th millennium BC have been uncovered.
These structures, typically rectangular “longhouses” built with wooden posts and slot trench foundations, indicate year-round occupation by farming families. Within and around such houses, archaeologists found domestic refuse like stone implements and fragments of early pottery, as well as pits and hearths. The finds included polished stone axes, flint arrowheads, and crude ceramic vessels, demonstrating the toolkit of the first farmers and their new foodways.
Neolithic farmers in Ireland grew several staple crops, and although plant remains in Kildare or Maynooth sites are not extensive, we can infer their agriculture from broader evidence of what was happening around Ireland at the time. Cereals were a cornerstone: emmer wheat and barley (both naked and hulled varieties) were the dominant grains cultivated by 3700–3500 BC across Ireland.
These would have been sown on cleared plots and harvested with flint sickles. The presence of grinding stones (querns) at Neolithic sites elsewhere suggests grain was ground into meal or flour for porridge or bread.
Animal husbandry was equally important. Neolithic communities kept domesticated animals such as cattle, pigs, and sheep/goats, providing a steady supply of meat and secondary products (milk, hides, wool). While specific faunal remains from Maynooth’s early Neolithic phase are sparse, we do know that by the later Neolithic and certainly by the Bronze Age, cattle bones are common on settlement sites in Leinster. The general shift is clear, by 4000–3500 BC, people in Kildare, and thus Maynooth, had transitioned to an economy of stock-rearing and cereal cultivation. Farming was here to stay.
Forest clearance in the Neolithic accelerated. Pollen records and archaeological findings show that farmers felled woodlands to create fields and pastures. The fertile lands of north Kildare and Maynooth proved ideal for these first farmers, as evidenced by the clustering of house sites and ceramics there.
Despite adopting farming, Neolithic people did not abandon wild foods. They still collected hazelnuts and fruits (charred hazelnut shells continue to appear in early farming sites), and they hunted or trapped wild game on occasion to supplement their diet. However, the consumption of fish did fall due to the new reliance on the land (Mallory, 2015).
This mixed subsistence strategy would hedge against crop failures and add variety to the diet. For instance, at the Maynooth Castle excavation (though it also had later activity), the assortment of animal bones included not only domestic species but also wild fauna, numerous bird bones, and fish bones alongside typical farm-animal remains. This suggests a broad diet: domestic cattle or pig for meat, wild fowl from wetlands, and fish (salmon, trout, or eel from nearby rivers) were all consumed in prehistoric Maynooth.
The Neolithic brought new methods and equipment for processing food. One major innovation was pottery, which appears in Ireland for the first time in this period. Coarse handmade pottery vessels allowed people to boil foods, make stews or soups, and store surplus grain or dried meats. Sherds of early Neolithic pottery were found at sites like Corbally, indicating that these farmers were cooking with ceramics.
We can imagine a Neolithic household in Maynooth cooking a stew of cereals and meat in a clay pot over a hearth or baking flatbread from ground wheat on a hot stone. Hearths would have been a focal point inside the houses, for warmth as well as for cooking. Charcoal and ash patches found on house floors show they maintained indoor fires.
In addition, outdoor fire-pits or ovens may have been used for roasting meat (much like the later fulacht fiadh cooking pits of the Bronze Age, though those appear after 2500 BC). Storage of food became vital now that people were producing surplus. Archaeologists often find pit features at Neolithic sites, some of these could be storage pits for grain, dug into the subsoil to keep cereals cool and dry.
Clay or wicker-lined bins might also have been used. While specific storage pits in Kildare’s excavations have not been uncovered, it’s reasonable that the early farmers had to protect their harvest. They may also have built above-ground granaries or used baskets to store dried grain in their homes. Domesticated animals provided milk, so dairy processing (into butter or cheese) began in this period as well.
Chemical residue analyses at Neolithic sites in Ireland and Britain have detected milk fats in pottery, implying that people were consuming dairy products by 4000–3500 BC. The Maynooth farmers could churn excess milk into butter and store it. One tradition was to preserve butter in bogs, though known ‘bog butter’ examples date to Bronze Age and later. However, the reason for storing butter in the bog is not entirely clear.
Neolithic communities in the Maynooth region practiced a mixed farming diet. They grew grain crops and either boiled them into porridge or baked them, they raised livestock and cooked meat in stews or by roasting, and they still foraged seasonal wild foods. The shift to sedentary life is reflected in the physical remains: substantial houses, hearths, pottery, polished tools, and field systems, all of which point to people investing labour in one locale and relying on stored food to get through winters.
One site in Maynooth continually comes up regarding food and settlement: the site of Maynooth castle. Archaeological excavations at the site of Maynooth Castle by Alan Hayden (1996) revealed evidence of grain cultivation dating back to pre-Norman times (when the castle was established).
A grain-drying kiln from the Iron Age period (500-400BC) contained carbonized grains of barley, oats, and wheat, with barley making up about 59% of the grain remains. Such findings further indicate that even before the castle was built, local people were growing and consuming cereals in the area due to its fertility.
I hope you enjoyed this little history of Maynooth. Each place we find ourselves in has a food history and I believe it’s worthwhile to investigate it, if only to make us realise that the places we find ourselves in predate us by thousands of years. It puts our own food history in perspective, both here, and elsewhere in the world.
In the next episode, we’ll look in detail at early Christian and Gaelic food culture in Maynooth (c. 400–1200 AD).
Jp
4th May, 2025.
Very enlightening and comprehensive! Great read.
So interesting how early land management became valued...roots we ought to respect. Really enjoyed your piece