Séamus Connolly, 67, has seen it four times and has a perfectly good explanation for the hedge that he will tell you about if you ask

The east hedge at Carrow House, a private estate outside Rathdrum in County Wicklow, is currently approximately four feet taller than it was in February and is, by any measure, not being maintained. Séamus Connolly, who spent thirty-one years as head groundskeeper at the property before his retirement in 2021, is aware of this. He would like it noted that he is no longer employed there and that the hedge is therefore not his responsibility. He would also like it noted that the decision to stop trimming it himself, as a favor, as he had been doing informally since his retirement, is entirely unrelated to what he saw near it on the morning of March 9th.

What he saw on March 9th was, by his account, approximately three feet tall, moving along the base of the hedge in a direction he describes as "deliberate," and gone by the time he reached the garden gate. He has seen it three more times since then — twice near the hedge, once near the old stone wall that separates the kitchen garden from the lower lawn — and has described it in consistent terms across all four encounters. County Wicklow sits in a region with documented Common Goblin activity going back to at least the 1970s, and Connolly’s description matches the behavioral profile in several notable ways, including the lateral movement, the preference for boundary structures, and what he calls "the way it didn’t run, exactly, but was gone anyway."

Community Notice

I’m not saying the two things are connected. I’m saying I have reached a point in my life where I trim hedges when I feel like trimming hedges. The east hedge, I don’t feel like trimming.

— Séamus Connolly, Retired Groundskeeper, Carrow House

Three other witnesses have independently reported anomalous sightings in the surrounding area between March and late June — one a dog walker on the public footpath adjacent to the estate’s north boundary, one a postal worker who has asked to remain unnamed, and one a woman who was visiting the area and described, in a voice message she left for a local Facebook group, "something small and confident that made me feel like I was the one trespassing." None of these witnesses knew Connolly. None of them had been near the east hedge.

Connolly spoke to me for forty minutes by phone and was consistent throughout. He is not frightened. He does not believe he is in danger. He has, however, moved the bench where he used to take his afternoon tea from the east side of the garden to the west side, citing improved afternoon light. The hedge, for its part, continues to grow. I have a call in to the current estate manager about whether they intend to address it. I have not heard back.