Mound

[chas]

I went a couple of decades ago, but in June, so no winter solstice.

Were you allowed inside?

Yes, we went inside, which is at the same time underwhelming given the scale outside, and very impressive given the tools they had to work with way back when. The passageway goes much of the diameter, and you can see the little window the sun comes through on the solstice. As I said, I thought it was way cool and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone visiting who has the least interest in history, culture, construction, etc., i. e., just about anyone.

[Mr.Gumby]

I thought it was way cool and wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone visiting who has the least interest in history, culture, construction, etc., i. e., just about anyone.

The waiting list for entry during the solstices is a mile long though (I can't remember how many years but a lot of them). And a lot of years it's just cloudy so you need luck on your side.

[Nanohedron]

My philosophy is that things get rebuilt. For whatever reason, sometimes they're given a new appearance in the process, so it's not as if Newgrange is in any way a fake; it was simply restored with the materials at hand, and educated guesses had to do the rest. Modern Ireland is its keeper now, and as such the restoration is fine by me; how does one bemoan the loss of "authenticity" when there's nothing to draw on other than rocks lying around? Rather, the restoration represents something of the cultural hopes and dreams of the people who did it, and it's also an attempt to restore and maintain a link with the past as best as can be done. That's appropriate, I think. It's more respectful, too; better to use everything there than to throw away what only leaves you guessing.

I'm going to disagree here. It would have been better to leave it as "a shambles" because in the decades since the restoration a number of technologies have appeared which would have added greatly to our knowledge of the people who built it and its function in their time. Ground penetrating radar, magnetic resonance imaging, LIDAR, Drone surveys--a whole bunch of technologies that would have made it possible to glean more info about the site in a non destructive way. Just a couple years ago the drought revealed evidence of unknown "henges" right nearby. But the reconstruction, while it created a compelling tourist site, destroyed a lot of information.

I can't disagree with that one bit. The discoveries being made thanks to LIDAR alone have been nothing short of incredible, and an invaluable boon to our knowledge base. We are now learning more about the scale of Mayan civilization than anyone previously had ever dreamed. Egypt practically throws her history at you, but now we know beyond any doubt, and to our surprise, that the old method of eyes and sweat has barely scratched the surface. Same with the Amazon and the Sahara. I personally look forward to how much more LIDAR can show us, because now we can know so much more, and thereby come closer to knowing the right questions to ask.

So I don't want to be misunderstood as having a "So what?" attitude. Rather, I think Newgrange as it now stands would be best taken in the context of the times in which it was restored. Given the tools and history theory that were available in the day, and since no one then would have foreseen the level of present technology, much less dared to hope for it, I think it's fair to allow that the restoration was done in good faith. Being guesswork, of course it's not ideal in the slightest; everyone then knew it too. But at the time, what could have been ideal? Newgrange was reclaimed from advancing ruin in the best way people knew how. So I see Newgrange's restoration as an historic marker in its own right; at any rate, we haven't much choice anyway but to see it in that way, until we find other sites made of similar-enough materials, and in better condition, to guide us in revising the restoration.

[Mr.Gumby]

I have a few snaps here from the early nineties. Typical big ringfort, Victorian restoration with the steps in the wall and all that. This one is near Sneem in Co Kerry, I forget the name of it. It was private property at the time, the farmer had put up an honesty box where you could leave a few ££. He was going around (in one of the pics) checking his sheep, I came across a few dead ones trying to find a vantage point to get my snap. Not a job perhaps I'd choose to do with 35mm B&W film but there you go. Impressive setting though.

[Nanohedron]

Impressive setting though.

That it is. Hard for the likes of me to imagine something like that in my back yard. All I've got is an old underground cistern that collapsed and made a hole for people to fall into.

[PB+J]

There's an impressive but obviously heavily rebuilt ringfort, Knockdrum near Castletownsend in Cork. There's a souterrain I suppose the foundation of a dwelling and in the distance you can see three large standing stones. It was pretty clearly a site of great significance but who knows what? Defense I suppose but why the standing stones? There's precious little explanation at the site, which I suppose adds to the aura of mystery: you can make up whatever; imagine Enya up there droning away.


I spent a fair amount of time driving around West Cork looking at neolithic sites but was always hesitant to hike out and look closely because I don't know how property rights/trespassing work in Ireland and I didn't want to be the ugly American. It's rarely clear who owns a given piece of land as far as I can tell. I'm trying to talk my wife into doing an archeological hiking tour of SW Ireland, if and when travel becomes a thing again.

I love the black and white images!

[Nanohedron]

I went a couple of decades ago, but in June, so no winter solstice.

Were you allowed inside?

Yes, we went inside, which is at the same time underwhelming given the scale outside ...

Here's a layout to give an idea. The cross-shaped part is the extent of the passage, the rest being solid mound:



Hard to imagine all that work being done by hand.

[Mr.Gumby]

I love the black and white images!

Best not to encourage that angle

I don't know how property rights/trespassing work in Ireland and I didn't want to be the ugly American.

Tricky issue. Landowners are liable to anything that may happen to people on their land, that aside, people can be protective of of their property and don't want wanderers anyway. Best exercise some caution or ask locally what the story is. There's an awful lot of stuff that you can get to without trespassing.

The Carleton Jones book I referred to earlier provides grid references and, as far as I remember, indications of accessibility of each site (but covers the Burren and the Aran islands only). Not a guidebook but very useful if you're planning to visit the sites.

[Nanohedron]

Sidetrack:

The approach in most Asian cultures is famously to just keep continually rebuilding the temple and say it's been there for 1000 years, even though not a single stone or timber is original. It's a defensible approach, possibly a better approach.

I don't know about other countries, but from what I've observed, for the most part the Japanese renovate historic buildings - temples, shrines, castles, villas, what have you - in bits, if it can be helped: if a section of eave gets dry rot, for example, they cut that out and puzzle-fit a new part in to match, so the result will be good and strong. And with no nails or screws, at that. Wooden pegs - sometimes. Their traditional wood treatments are really good for resistance to weather and insects, so it makes practical as well as historic sense to preserve as much of the original as they can, and they usually reserve complete rebuilding from the ground up for disasters like fire. Needless to say, old architectural records are priceless in that country, and maintaining ancient buildings is mainly why their traditional carpentry is still practiced; apart from the occasional use of power saws, working on any ancient building with modern methods would be unacceptable both philosophically and in practice, because modern construction methods have consistently proven unsuitable for the purpose, and are even inferior in the long term. Harder as they are, sometimes the old ways are best.

Sorry for the digression. Carry on.

[Mr.Gumby]

I'll post a few more, a bit of lockdown entertainment.



This is Caher Dun hIrguish, a pic of it on a murkier day posted in an earlier post. This one shows the scale of it a bit better, with people in it and all (they're members of the Ballyvaughan-Fanore walking group, which I used to walk with). The fort sits high above Black head, overlooking Galway bay, quite the setting. But a 45 minute or so walk from Fanore, cross country. One local man told me the thing was pristine until the seventies when some local lads got it into their heads treasure was buried there, one Sunday while the village was at mass they tore big chunks of the walls down.



Another spectacular site, Cahercommaun, built on the edge of a cliff with a big view of the surrounding country. The OPW has done an amount of reconstruction and put a boardwalk and viewing platform in place, which is a bit of a shame on one level but it guides visitors around rather than having them climb the walls and displacing the stone work. Extensively documented and excavated, there's a sousterrain with an exit halfway own the cliff, some escape route. Easily accessible too. At the time of the visit during which I took the pic there was a massive bull standing on the path to the site, I asked the girl of the adjacent farm if it was safe to go in 'Sure' she said 'he's a dote, just don't look him in the eye and move slowly'. Hard to take photographs of these things that do justice to the scale of them, a massive wide angle or a drone needed, perhaps.

More or less across the road from Cahercommaun is the big tomb of Creevagh:



very near the road, so quite a handy spot.

[PB+J]

Marvelous, thank you!

I love these sites because they are so strange and hard to understand: what were they thinking? the whole point of studying history, to my mind, is the revelation of how strange the past was and how differently people thought in even the recent past.

I'm redoubling my efforts to persuade my wife.

[Mr.Gumby]

It is interesting there is actually very little known of the society that built these Cahers, they existed from the bronze age onward but some cahers were occupied into the early middle ages but the cairns these communities produced and the grave sites etc and what their significance was, there are only theories having a stab at it.

Cahercommaun is particularly interesting as there are several enclosures and walls around it. Another one Caherballykinvarraga is lovely too, a large caher with a smaller one on an elevation beside it and defensive works (chevaux de frise) all around. That is sitting in the middle of some field and if you don't know it's there you will never find it. The farmer does tend to keep a bull in the field (or at least puts up warning signs telling you there is one) to deter visitors but it's a big field and you can get around that.

There was a large scale excavation at Roughan Hill/Parknabinnia, there was a large community there that left a very dense and wide ranging set of remain. Some bodies were found in the wedge tombs, they took DNA and compared it to that of children in the local school, they were direct descendants.

This is Dun Conchubar on Inishmaan, absolutely massive, with a view through its exit towards North Clare:





But it gets interesting when a sign of humanity is left behind :



The face above is incorporate now in a Holy Well on the back of Corker Hill, St Patrick's well. That whole area of North Clare, Corker Hill, Corcomroe, the Valley of the seven churches, Turlough Hill, St Colman's well and all the stuff on the mountain around is so full of traces of human life, you can spend weeks seeking it all out and taking it in. It's all concentrated on a few square miles. And you can pop over to Bellharbour to see how Chris Droney is doing (playing his concertina as always, unstoppable at 96).

[DrPhill]

Fascinating stuff. I love it. I have always liked Neolithic remains, and they tend to survive best in grander, more isolated spots. For me that is a double pleasure. If I ever get back to Eire I want to spend lots of daylight visiting these kind of sites.

Not sure where to spend the evenings

Thanks for posting them. Mr G

[Mr.Gumby]

It's a bit of fun.

Some of the locations are wonderful. I also often seek out Holy Wells, a lot of those are in locations that have something special. Sometimes though you find a spot that's positively evil. One winter's day we drove out to Tullycrine (that of the hornpipe) because there was a Holy Well I wanted to see. As it turned out it had been 'modernised' which basically meant the whole area it sat in was concreted over. But the well kept running and had flooded the place, it was a frosty morning so we had to try get uphill on an inch of ice. Interesting going.

But on the top of the hill, right above the well site was a small caher or some stone enclosure. It had been used as a cemetery for unbaptised children (there was one adult man buried there as well, I don't what his sin was). The place was covered in little stones, each marking the burial of a baby.





There was such an air of sadness, as well as the thought of the parents who were denied a proper burial for their children. It was cruel and miserable, an evil spot.

[ytliek]

Love the images, thank you for sharing.