Wolf Hall’s Red Deer
Ireland at this point was approaching, but had not yet reached, the Last Glacial Maximum, when the British–Irish Ice Sheet became much more extensive. That distinction matters. “Ice Age” does not mean that every place was continuously sealed beneath ice. The island’s glacial history involved changing ice margins, exposed ground, meltwater, frost-shattered slopes and periods in which animals could move through parts of the landscape. Exactly where ice lay in 30,812 BCE cannot be mapped from the evidence available. Reconstructions of the last ice sheet are strongest for its growth after this broad period and for its later retreat; they caution against drawing a sharp, island-wide ice boundary for one notional year.