3-085-726 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Question of the Giant's Causeway, in the Dublin Court of Appeal: view of the disputed ground, 1898. 'Many visitors to the famous promontory on the coast of Antrim...must have learned with concern that it was figuring in the Law Courts, and that, too, with a risk of its ultimate enclosure, if not from the public gaze, at least from free investigation. It has now been decided...that the syndicate which leases the adjoining territory has also the sole rights over the curious ridge of basaltic columns in which Irish legend professes to see the remnant of the bridge built by the doughty giant Fin MacCool...The Court of Appeal has, however, pronounced in favour of the public right of way...through the plaintiff's land to the promontory, and it is to be hoped that the lessees will not...interfere with the public access to the Causeway itself since it may legally be approached through their territory. Our Illustration shows the curious columnar form of the famous bed of basalt, a form due, it is held, to the process of contraction and cracking which went on when the original lava streams cooled and solidified. The Giant's Causeway is a unique specimen of such columnar basalt by reason of its forty thousand odd columns of similar shape...'. From "Illustrated London News", 1898.