Go Walk: Hellfire Hill, Co Dublin

This circuit of one of the foothills of the Dublin Mountains, through varied surroundings with great views over Dublin, is suitable for all, and children will love the spooky building, the old Hellfire Club, on top of the hill.

Go through the wooden stile at the end of the carpark nearest the road, and within a few yards head up steeply to the right. This steep bit is great for warming up on a winter’s day: just before you reach a forestry road look to the right to see an area of mature conifers that were snapped off, half way up their height, by what must have been a mini-tornado a few years ago.

Cross the forestry road and continue steeply upward again past an ancient gallan or standing stone that once stood upright here. As you come into the open, look out for red squirrels in the larch trees to the left. The songs of chaffinches, wrens and robins ring in the trees, and glimpses can often be had of shyer birds here such as blue jays. Once out of the trees, great views open up of Dublin city and eventually the Irish Sea, with Howth Head stretching eastwards.

A fence is followed to the grassy summit where our route turns right with the fence. Take a detour here to walk the last 150m to visit the Hellfire Club, a dramatic stone ruin that crowns the very top of the hill.

It is one of the best- preserved 18th century hunting lodges in Ireland, built close to the grouse-rich Featherbeds in about 1726 by the Right Honourable William Conolly, one of Ireland’s richest men in his time.

After his death it was bought by Richard Parsons, First Earl of Rosse, and a painter named James Worsdale, members of the infamous Hellfire Club. On occasions the club met here, and many lurid stories are told of their excesses, said to include abducting young girls, setting fire to cats and playing cards with the devil. Sometime during the 1750s the lodge was burnt in a fire and abandoned, but not before it had taken on the name the Hellfire Club.

Stones from a great 5000-year-old Neolithic burial cairn that originally crowned the hill were used to build the lodge. If you look behind the lodge you will identify a raised, part-circular, earth bank, all that remains of the cairn today.

Our route continues downhill at the corner of the fence northwards along a grassy path. Keep the fence to your right as it goes first left and then right, downhill again, and then leave it, turning left on to the end of a forestry road. This part of our route is may-marked with a green “walking feet” sign .

The route climbs now towards the woods again and bears around to the left: as the track levels out there is a new vista ahead. Beyond the rounded form of Piperstown Hill the summits of the western Dublin Mountains step up southwards towards Kippure.

The forestry road is followed through the woods around the south side of the hill. Where another road connects from the left a spring-fed pond is passed. It’s all downhill now on the forestry road, passing by the steep route you took in the beginning.