Have you spotted the many 'benchmarks' hidden around Dundalk?

Dundalk is covered with crow’s feet. They are everywhere - indented in stone - all over the town. Once important markings to facilitate drainage and engineering projects, they are now superseded and obsolete.

I was a Leveller. No nothing to do with politics or indeed finance. I cut benchmarks and give them a value; a height above sea level. On sights that were selected with a view to permanency the benchmarks were indeed written in stone.

Cold chisels for cutting them had to be sharpened and finely tempered and although forges (in my time) were petering out there were still a scattering of elderly men with furnace, hammer and anvil to celebrate the task.

Their premises were truly medieval, their rite of tempering - dipping and withdrawing the hot metal in a tub of stagnant water - alchemy from the past.

To cut a mark I took the levelling bracket, placed it against the stone, positioned it with the plate bubble and then after further small spirit level adjustments I marked the three inch line and started to cut.

First lightly tracking the stone with a newly sharpened and tempered chisel, I then carefully deepened the crevasse, occasionally checking that the metal flange of the levelling bracket fitted snugly within the cut. Then satisfied it was level and true the ornamental legs of the distinctive ‘crows foot’ could be marked and their indenting begin.

Finishing by giving a bit of extra depth to the bottom of each ‘claw’ so that a spread hand in one hundred years time would be halted by the unique design, as it slid down the stone. (I had no idea that in a short number of years the whole operation would be superseded by readings from navigational satellites in the sky.)

Where possible we incorporated old levelling in our new work. These marks cut by the sappers (in the early 1800s) are a size bigger and a measure deeper than the ones I cut .

Searching for one such mark an affable man came out of the house and told me ‘We widened the entrance when we got the tractor.’ Then he proceeded to lead me around to the back of the house where he had public-spiritly relocated the stone with the benchmark on it in an ornamental wall.

At the commencement of the first large scale Ordnance Survey maps of the country a national datum for levelling was established at Poolbeg lighthouse in Dublin port.

This was set at as low water ordinary spring tides on 8th April 1837 and found to be 20ft 11inbelow a permanent mark on the base of the lighthouse tower. From this zero mark level lines were run, primary, secondary and tertiary to traverse the country and establish heights. ( The datum was changed to mean sea level at Malin Head, Co. Donegal in 1958. )

A visit to Dundalk library and a request to have a look at Ordnance Survey maps afforded me access to an array of plans of the town. Maps of differing survey dates, scales and sheet lines.

The larger scale maps showing the location and value of scores of bench marks. I give as an example the marks on the front of both St. Nicholas’s churches to the north of the town.

There’s a particularly good one on a stone built pillar to the south of Anne Street. I’d say from the cut of it its 150 years old.

And now I come to why (at this late stage) I am championing benchmarks. Its because my mother could never understand the idea of aimlessly going for a walk. This was because she like everyone else of her generation had had to walk and cycle all her life. Looking for bench marks is a reason never to have to walk aimlessly again.

Whether in an informed way of firstly having looked them up on a map or in the more cavalier fashion of simply keeping a weather eye out. They’re all over Dundalk, on stone bridges, churches, monuments, even steps.

In rural areas there are thousands of them on everything from gate pillars to huge rocks. So find yourself your very own benchmark, your ‘place’ that you can keep to yourself or better than that; share with friends.

Good prospecting and good luck.