Some way off, but Recent Discoveries in Archaeology in Wiltshire by Melanie Pomeroy-Kellinger, Wiltshire County Archaeologist, at the Lecture Hall – Salisbury & South Wiltshire Museumon, 9 March 2010 from 19:30, may be of interest.
On June 20 1884 – two years after parliament passed John Lubbock’s Ancient Monuments Act, and a mere 12 days after General Augustus Pitt Rivers visited the site to assess its suitability – the great exposed neolithic burial chamber at Pentre Ifan, Pembrokeshire, became Wales’s first scheduled ancient monument. On June 20 two centuries later, a party of archaeologists gathered under the capstone to celebrate the general’s decision and the present system of protection that evolved from Lubbock’s act……
British Archaeology September/October 2009
Arriving rather late for the party at Pentre Ifan, but it is rather interesting to note that this very elegant monument had a birthday this year. It became the first scheduled Welsh monument in 1884, to be protected by law. Obviously saved for its dramatic beauty in the Welsh countryside it seems a pity that other such sites around the country cannot always have the same protection.
by Gordon Kingston, Heritage Action
“Taillte and Nás Laighean of the slopes,
Aileach and Eamhain, red with wine
- no man leaves them sorrowful -
Uisneach and Cruachain and Caiseal.”
Translated from a poem by Giolla Brighde na Con Midhe, 13th Century (Smyth 1988, 163).
I
Just pondering on the Unesco tentative list’s ‘royal sites of Ireland‘, so-called because of their identification as such in early Irish literature; Tara (Temair), Cashel, Knockaulin (Dún Áilinne), Rathcrogan (Cruachain) and the Hill of Uisneach. Steve White, in a comment on an earlier article, and Tarawatch, have suggested properly completing the set, by including Navan Fort (Emain Macha), in Northern Ireland, in a new trans-boundary nomination with the other Irish royal sites.
To quote John Waddell, on their connection (1998, 325); “A number of celebrated ‘royal sites’ figure prominently in early Irish literature and four, Tara, Navan, Rathcrogan and Knockaulin are identified as pre-Christian centres in the calendar of saints known as Félire Óengusso which dates to about 830 AD… In a variety of early Medieval sources these sites are variously remembered as royal settlements or forts, cemeteries and assembly places… Survey and excavation now shows that these sites are related at least in so far as each of them has had a complex history of ceremonial and ritual activity in later prehistoric times.” A later figure, also provided by Waddell (1998, 346), shows a tantalising similarity between Navan Fort, ’capital’ of Ulster (phase 3ii) and Knockaulin, ‘capital’ of Leinster (’Rose’ phase).
The Unesco criteria demand that the site(s) must be of ‘Outstanding Universal Value’, not merely of value in an Irish context, but presumably of relevance in the decisive criteria are:
“1) must bear a unique testimony to a cultural tradition/civilization which is living or has disappeared”
and
“6) be directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with ideas, or with beliefs, with artistic and literary works of outstanding universal significance. (The Committee considers that this criterion should preferably be used in conjunction with other criteria)”
Of course, any such nomination would also have to deal with Unesco’s stipulation that “it must be demonstrated that a comprehensive Management Plan and legislative protections are in place for the site”, or rather, how Tara, ‘capital’ of Meath, and its recent invasive alterations would be viewed in the light of it. This, depending on how monument boundaries will be defined, or how much destruction can be brushed under the concrete, may finish it even before it begins.
If we do venture to ignore this last issue, however, there would seem to be a strong case for Waddell’s four sites, if considered as a unit and probed with the two criteria; the complex, ‘kingly’ capitals of an ancient Iron Age European warrior tradition, uniquely and specifically documented in a large body of ancient myth, saga and literature.
You may note, however, that Uisneach, although an important ritual site of fires and assemblies, symbolic of the centre of the country, is not often recognised with the other four as ‘royal’. Smyth (1988, 178) quotes the Lebor Gabála as to its function;
“About the stone in cold Uisneach
In the plains of Mide of the horseman-bands,
On its top – it is a fair co-division -
Is the co-division of every province.”
It does, nonetheless, feature in the same literary sources. Cashel, a later site, presents more of a problem. In the early literature Munster was ruled, not from Tipperary, but from Temair Luachra, in Kerry, the seat, depending on the tale you read, of Eochaid, or the hound-king, Cú Roi. According to ‘The Intoxication of the Ulaid’ (trans. Gantz 1981, 198);
“…Temuir Lúachra lies on the slope of Irlúachair…”,
a mysterious, impregnable place;
“Whatever part of the world Cú Roi might be in, he sang a spell over his stronghold each night; it would then revolve as swiftly as a mill wheel turns, so that its entrance was never found after sunset.”
(‘Bricriu’s Feast’, trans. Gantz 1981, 247)
Cashel‘s sturdy contours would never need such an imagination to fill them in.
II
Consider the conflict in the Táin Bó Cualigne, in the context of this ‘warrior tradition‘, “the oldest vernacular epic in Western Literature”, according to the poet Thomas Kinsella (1969, vii), a struggle between two of the ‘royal sites‘; Emain Macha, in Ulster and Cruachain, in Connaught. At the very beginning of the tale, Queen Medb, in Rathcrogan fort, mentions all the kingdoms while reminiscing (Kinsella 1969, 53);
“My father gave me a whole province of Ireland, this province ruled from Cruachan, which is why I am called “Medb of Cruachan.” And they came from Finn the king of Leinster, Ros Ruad’s son to woo me, and from Coirpre Niafer the king of Temair, another of Rus Ruad’s sons. They came from Conchobor, king of Ulster, son of Fachtna, and they came from Eochaid Bec, and I wouldn’t go. For I asked a harder wedding gift than any woman ever asked before from a man in Ireland – the absence of meanness and jealousy and fear.”
O’Kelly (1989, 254), however, urges caution in running too fast with evidence from such epics. Their evocations of a heroic age may have come from universal sources. Although based on ancient oral traditions, they were written down hundreds of years later and inevitably influenced by the writers’ knowledge and surroundings; “Very little material has been found that is consonant with the rich aristocratic warlike peoples portrayed in the heroic literature as occupying these sites,..” Waddell (1998, 304) refers to comparisons between actual Iron Age swords and those described in the Táin, which found the latter to be, in fact, the same as contemporary early Medieval weapons.
Conversely, we could recognise the prominence with which the sites figure in the literature, as mentioned in the initial quotation from Waddell, then turn to Francis Pryor (2003, 377), as he proceeds to join actual features at Emain Macha to those mentioned when Cúchulainn’s father rallies Ulster, in The Táin;
“… a heroic world, peopled by legendary warriors. The Cattle Raid of Cooley (The Táin) gives us a glimpse of this world. They are extraordinary words from a vanished age:
“Sualtaim went to Emain, and cried out to the men of Ulster: ’Men have been murdered, women stolen, cattle plundered!’ He gave his first cry from the slope of the enclosure, his second beside the fort, and the third cry from the Mound of the Hostages inside Emain itself.”
… It must have been an extraordinary, awe-inspiring and mysterious place.”
To my mind, there are one or two key questions that must therefore be addressed, beyond any issues about the appropriacy of the Hill of Uisneach and Cashel and if the literary route is followed. Firstly, did these sites, multi-period and of fascinating complexity, have the type of Iron Age cultural tradition, or civilisation, laid out in the ancient literature? Secondly and if not, does the fact that they feature prominently and regularly in the events of such an important body of work, allow them to testify for the cultural traditions contained within it?
Postscript.
For those who fought to keep Tara intact and grew frustrated at the inaction of an environment minister who had previously been against the motorway, these other words of Pryor’s (2003, 369), describing the danger faced by Emain Macha in the 1980s, may prove depressing in their contrast;
“The operators of the quarry next to the site wanted to expand, and ultimately to engulf it. A planning inquiry was convened in 1986. The Friends of Navan put a strong case, and we supported Barry Cunliffe, whose evidence left the inquiry in no doubt of the site’s international importance. Despite this, the commissioner conducting the inquiry ruled that the quarry could not be halted. Then, the following year, 1987, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland overruled the commissioner at the last minute, and the quarry, which now survives as a pool eighty feet deep, was stopped.”
Gantz, J. (trans.) 1981 Early Irish Myths and Sagas. Penguin ISBN 0-14-044397-5
Kinsella, T. (trans.) 1969 The Táin. Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-280373-5
O’Kelly, M.J. 1989 Early Ireland. Cambridge University Press ISBN 0-521-33687-2
Pryor, F. 2003 Britain BC. Harper Perennial ISBN 0-00-712693-4
Smyth, D. 1988 A Guide to Irish Mythology. Irish Academic Press ISBN 0-7165-2612-4
Waddell, J. 1998 The Prehistoric Archaeology of Ireland ISBN 1-869857-39-9
The Beckhampton Longbarrow (or Longstones Longbarrow) at Beckhampton, Avebury is among the oldest known barrows in the country – perhaps as old as 3,200bce. Sadly, both ends of the barrow have been ploughed out and destroyed.
See also this Wikipedia article on Cissbury, which gives a map of the threatened area of the hill fort, two thirds down into the article.
by Gordon Kingston, Heritage Action
The Tarawatch website has reported a recent briefing, from the National Roads Authority to Meath County Council, about another tolled motorway; the Leinster Orbital Route. The proposed road would circle the outer Dublin area for 80km, all the way from County Meath down to County Wicklow and cut, once again, through the area around the Hill of Tara. Furthermore, according to Tarawatch, the feasibility study indicates that the controversial Blundelstown interchange, a vast 50 acre tattoo on one side of the hill, was originally conceived with this route in mind.
Of course, archaeology and the sanctity of Ireland’s ancient heritage were far from the minds of some of the local councillors, when they were presented with news of the proposal. According to the Meath Chronicle; “serious doubts were raised over the need to keep a 2km-wide corridor of land open while consultations take place over the choosing of a final route for the motorway.” Indeed and how can you be expected to get planning permission sorted for houses and development, if you don’t know exactly where the road is going to be?
“Councillor Tommy Reilly said that he had been shouting for 10 years about the need for an outer orbital route. The motorway would “open up the county” and bring development, a regional college, hospitals and industries. He hoped there would be a quick decision on the selection of final route.”
I’m sure that he does.
Still only a ripple on the water, but ripples will turn into waves. In the words of the feasibility report; “ready and available for implementation at any stage in the future, when required.”
According to the International Energy Agency ; “a continuation of current trends in energy use puts the world on track for a rise in temperature of up to 6°C and poses serious threats to global energy security.” In what position does that analysis place our road/development obsession?
It has been reported that illegal camping took place at Wayland’s Smithy over the weekend, this site is managed and presumably owned by English Heritage. The problem of course is that it’s off the beaten track, and requires a certain amount of walking from the Liddington Castle car park.
English Heritage have in the past made special arrangements for camping for specific events at Stonehenge and Avebury over the years, and such arrangements are arrived at with the full consensus of all parties. Wild camping at ancient monuments though is illegal, The National Trust who owns much of the wild landscape of England stipulates that they do not condone unless prior permission is given, and says that ‘Where we tolerate ‘wild camping’ it should only involve one night stopovers, a maximum of two campers and leave no trace of its presence’.
Several tents that were in front of Wayland’s Smithy unfortunately seem to belong to a group that may be seen as political extremists. As it is a popular site for visitors over the weekend, they would have been very discouraged by the tents and litter found there, let alone the sanitary arrangements!
The Neolithic long barrow of Wayland’s Smithy is a very beautiful place set amongst the trees and it deserves respect for its ancient stones. Camping can be done in authorised camping sites and does not have to occur on Ancient Monument Sites, it causes too much damage, fires, graffiti, etc.
Newgrange by Oscar Montelious (1843-1921)
by Gordon Kingston, Heritage Action
As a continuation from my previous article, I thought that it might be a good idea to briefly examine the planning process around the Bremore development. I should state at the outset that I’m not a legal professional. This is just my own understanding of the Bremore situation, having studied what appear to be the relevant sections of the Strategic Infrastructure Act 2006 and the Harbours (Amendment) Act 2009.
1. Extension of Harbour Limits
In July of this year the Drogheda Port Company applied for an extension of its harbour boundary, to include the Bremore area. Although a necessary preliminary move for development, movement of harbour limits is treated separately for planning purposes and the application can be made directly, without requirement for public consultation, to the Minister for Transport. The relevant legislation is the Harbours (Amendment) Act, specifically Section 3(a), which substitutes for Section 9 in the original 1996 Act and Section 3(b), which substitutes for the limits of Drogheda and Dublin Port, as defined in the third schedule of that act.
After a process of consultation with the company, the aforementioned Section 3(a) allows the minister to change the harbour limits, defined in Section 3(b), having regard merely to the capacity of the harbour and to navigational safety. Applications for planning permission, permission granted in respect of any development of the land, environmental impact assessments and other listed factors may also be given regard to, but only if relevant to the decision, in the minister’s opinion. The environmental impact statement for the development remains ‘in preparation‘, but this Section suggests that its absence, as raised by an Taisce, is not a stumbling block to the boundary extension and there seems to be little in the way of it proceeding, in Irish Law.
The two ports specified in the amendment to the third schedule of the original Act are also the two with upcoming expansion plans. Of course, it has previously been suggested that the new Act includes “an amendment to allow Drogheda Port Company permission to alter the limits of the Port Company in order to facilitate the proposal to build a new port at Bremore.” In congruent flow, it was signed on the 21st July 2009 and followed by notice of the Bremore application, in the Drogheda Independent, one week later. You may further note the advice of the recent Indecon report; “Nothing should be done at a policy level to block either the proposed expansion of Dublin Port or the proposed development of Bremore at this stage.”
A fait accompli.
2. An Bórd Pleanála and the proposed development.
The development of the deepwater port, excluding, perhaps, any ancillary projects, has been classified as a Strategic Infrastructure Development, that is, a development that fits one of the specifications in the seventh schedule of the 2006 Strategic Infrastructure Act. In this case, presumably, Part 2 of the schedule, which covers transport infrastructure; harbour and port installations. What this means is that the planning process for these specified development types has the potential to be ‘fast-tracked‘, by allowing a direct application for permission to An Bórd Pleanála, rather than to the local planning authority.
Such direct application is allowed if the board is satisfied, after consultations with the prospective applicant, that the ’seventh schedule’ development would be of strategic or social importance to the State or its region; or would contribute substantially to the National Spatial Strategy, or regional planning guidelines; or would have a significant effect on the area of more than one planning authority. (Section 37A.2)
During this period, of consultation, the Board gives advice to the prospective applicant about whether the development would fit within these criteria. Also it may, looking ahead, advise on the planning application and consideration of application, procedures and more specifically, the considerations “related to proper planning and sustainable development or the environment,” that could, in its opinion, have a bearing on an eventual decision in relation to the application. (Section 37B.3)
According to the Bórd Pleanála website , pre-application consultation is still the position, or case type, of the Bremore development. If the Board decides that it would fall outside the criteria, then a written notice of such will be served on Bremore Ireland Port Ltd. and its application would then have to be made to the local planning authority. If it makes the opposite decision it will serve a positive written notice and the company can then, if it wishes, request that the Board give an opinion, also in writing, on what information it will have to include in its environmental impact statement (EIS). (Sections 37B.4, 37D.1) This statement must accompany the subsequent application for planning permission. (Section 37E.1)
Assuming the latter outcome, prior notice of the application to the Board and a prepared EIS, must be published in one, or more, local newspapers, specifying the times, places and period (at least 6 weeks) at and during which copies can be inspected, or purchased. Submissions and observations relating to “the implications of the proposed development for proper planning and sustainable development,” and “the likely effects on the environment of the proposed development, if carried out,“ can be made to the Board during this specified period. (Section 37E.3)
The factors that the Board must consider before making its decision on the application are set out, in full, in Section 37G.2, and include the submitted EIS, any submissions and observations made and any other relevant information on the likely impact on proper planning, sustainable development and the environment.
3. Why do we object?
(a) The area that would be affected is too important to lose under development.
Although it is probable that some, as yet unspecified, accommodation will be made for the national monuments on the ground surface, this is only part of the tale. It is also probable that the tombs were just one feature of an extensive ceremonial landscape, the remains of which are still underground. To quote, once again, Professor George Eogan; “the area on both sides of the Delvin River from Gormanston to Bremore is a large Megalithic cemetery dating from 3,500BC.”
Preservation only by record means the destruction of archaeological sites and evidence, which could be more fully analysed and understood by future generations.
(b) The need for a new deep water port is not there.
The thrust for port expansion is based, firstly, on the recent, rapid growth in the Irish Economy. A sizeable part of the increased pressure on the ports was due to importation of construction materials, but this boom is now gone and the country is significantly over-housed for its population size.
It is based, secondly, on a forecast of and a need for, future economic growth, what George Monbiot recently referred to as “the central immortality project of western society“. This is the way that things have always been, but, unfortunately, it is no longer possible. The world is running out of raw materials and more especially, the driver of production, consumption and port trade; oil. As prices inevitably rise more sources, in Canada and Russia for example, may become viable, but at atrocious cost to the atmosphere and environment. In reference to the Canadian resource, a recent article in the Times stated that; ”extracting each barrel of crude from the sticky mass of sand, clay and bitumen produces two to three times as much CO2 as drilling for a barrel of conventional oil.”
Even if you can accept this scenario as sustainable and allow the conclusions of the aforementioned Indecon report, the need is not immediate; 2020 to 2025 at the earliest. Time enough, surely, to identify and develop several, less harmful, alternative port sites.
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world…?”
Well Tara has finally arrived on the Unesco Tentative List site alongside other royal sites of Ireland; (Cashel, Drin Ailinne, Hill of Uisneach, Rathcroghan Complex and Tara Complex): The Royal Sites represent unique expressions of lrish society as places of royal inauguration, ceremony and assembly, representing each of the five provinces of Ancient Ireland.
It is of course all a bit late in the day, the landscape has been severely damaged by the impact of the motorway that is almost built; the Green Minister Mr. Gormley having inherited the poisoned chalice of ’growth at all costs’ sold his ‘green’ values down the road for political expediency and then, surprise, surprise, the so called ‘celtic tiger’ economy unfortunately lost its roar.
There is a long and well thought out presentation on Tarawatch in response to this news, a proposal and citing of the archaeological and historical importance of Tara and its surrounding landscape…
A common misunderstanding exists that Tara simply consists of the ridge known as the Hill of Tara. Recent research, following the most modern theories of archaeological landscape and surveying techniques, shows that the central ceremonial complex on the hill was surrounded by settlements, religious monuments, ceremonial entrances and route-ways and strategically-placed fortifications. Extended ritual and settlement complexes, or landscapes, are a recognised archaeological phenomenon known elsewhere in Ireland. Other examples include Navan Fort (Emain Macha), Co. Armagh and Rathcroghan (Ráith Crúachain), Co. Roscommon. In the medieval period (7th to 12th century), the prehistoric landscape of Tara translated into a royal demesne defended by the local kings.
Whether or not the Hill of Tara and its surrounding monuments will make it as a World Heritage Site remains to be seen but the proposed Tentative List for Ireland – 2009 can be found here.
For once, an entirely positive heritage story!
but sadly, published at the same time as a deeply disturbing and uniquely British one – see Only in Britain….
Yet rest there, Shelley, on the sill,
For though the winds come frorely
I’m away to the rain-blown hill
And the ghost of Sorley.
Charles Hamilton Sorley 1895-1915
Something in keeping with the season. The poem is from Sorley’s Weather by Captain Robert Graves (Fairies and Fusiliers, 1917) which ends with the above. See also Rhiannon’s link of 4 October 2005 here - http://www.themodernantiquarian.com/site/2617/barbury_castle.html where she writes, “The WW1 poet Charles Hamilton Sorley (only 20 when he died) wrote this poem about Barbury Castle.”
The carving on the post above is from the interior of a replica Iron Age roundhouse at Barbury Castle. Sadly the roundhouse was totally destroyed last year in a fire started by vandals.
This campaign is an attempt to prevent… Annihilation of a landscape involving 3000sq km of the Upper Damodar catchment including agricultural lands, forests, Tribal sacred sites, wildlife corridors, two hundred villages practicing Khovar and Sohrai ritual mural painting traditions, paleo-archaeological, megalithic and rock-art sites – by 31 new proposed and 3 operative opencast coal mines covering approx. 20sq.km for each mine of 300 feet and more deep. The Campaign began almost 23 years ago and is now entering its final phase. It was begun by Bulu Imam, Convener, INTACH Hazaribagh Chapter in 1987 and still continues under his guidance. The campaign is closely associated with the Tribal Women Artists Cooperative (TWAC) a non-registered organization under the aegis of INTACH and consists of women of the villages resisting mining which has several times been represented in Geneva at the UN Working Group on Indigenous Populations on the issue of Karanpura opencast coal mining.
A unique palaeo-archaeological stone tool evidence of Early Man known as the Damodar Valley Civilization, prehistoric megalithic sites, and one dozen rockart sites, the pride of Jharkhand, dated to over 8,000 years back will be gouged out into 300 feet mine pits running shoulder to shoulder down the Karanpura Valley, which will be in a stark lunar landscape incapable of supporting human or animal life.
Heritage Action occasionally strays from home ground, as there are many other megalithic sites threatened by destruction, and there is nothing worse than to find a whole area of a beautiful and sacred landscape to its people, trashed by open-cast mining. This is happening in Karapura Valley, apart from the environmental issues of mining and burning this coal, the impact on the wild animals, such creatures as the elephants and tigers and the flora of the valley are utterly destroyed, as is the rich farming land. In many ways the loss of rock art and megalithic sites are relatively unimportant compared to the loss of an enormously rich and diverse culture that the indigenous people represent.
Sadly the Indian government is able to grab this land for free because of an unfortunate Land Acquisition Act – and guess who left them this legacy, it was instituted under the colonial British in 1895 for mineral-bearing areas. There is also the added tragedy of a traditional culture that is lost; Intangible Cultural Heritage covers many aspects such as language, art etc; see below* Here in the villages of the Karanpura Valley traditional painting of houses in age old designs will be lost. The loss of a culture is in many ways just as important as the loss of a historical site, that these things are then replaced by damaging environmental mines and coal-fired power generation, which will of course result in the proliferation of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere beggars belief. The following two photographs highlights a ‘before’ and ‘after’ scenario…
http://www.karanpuracampaign.com/
http://newswing.com/?p=2826
How sad that the Textile Conservation Centre -
http://www.textileconservationcentre.soton.ac.uk/index.shtml in Winchester now seems certain to close -
In an age where members of the House (elected and non-elected) seem eligible for ‘allowances’ (of the most dubious kind) something as valuable as our Textile Conservation Centre goes quietly down the drain.
As a society with a heritage worth preserving and, through the Textile Conservation Centre which helps to train textile conservators from all over the world to preserve their heritage, the Centre should now be considered so inconsequential.
See also -
“Ancient artworks from Jordan – some of them never before seen outside Petra and Amman – are going on display today at Rome’s Quirinal Palace. The star attraction at the exhibition is a statue found at the site of Ayn Ghazal near Amman dating from 7500 BC, one of the oldest surviving statues of its kind and size.”
More here – http://heritage-key.com/blogs/bija-knowles/worlds-oldest-statue-go-show-rome
By Gordon Kingston, Heritage Action
By 2007 Ireland’s booming economy and growth in demand for construction materials, was causing increased capacity pressure at the ten ports along its Eastern seaboard. One obvious consequence of this was the “Port Tunnel”, a new access to the largest port, in Dublin, which was constructed at enormous public expense, €752 million, to ease the traffic congestion caused by heavy goods vehicles in the city. A further modification proposed to address the capacity problem was an expansion of the port, a concept requiring the infilling of 52 acres of Dublin Bay. This idea, initially suggested in 1988, is currently under consideration by An Bord Pleanala.
In the meantime Drogheda Port Company came up with its own proposal, a new large-capacity, deep water port at Bremore and entered into a government-approved joint venture for the project with Castle Market Holdings Ltd.. Castle Market Holdings is owned, via Real Estate Opportunities Ltd., by Richard Barrett and Johnny Ronan’s Treasury Holdings, one of the largest developers in Ireland and a company with a long track record of “unwillingness to back down in the face of legal threats”.
A recent study, by Indecon International Economic Consultants, on the future of Dublin Port and this sector in general, contained the following conclusions (report numbering used):
“1. The level of port capacity requirements will be influenced by economic growth
and by developments in consumer expenditure;
2. There is potential to improve the capacity utilisation of ports in Ireland and
this should be pursued as a priority;
3. There is a need to develop additional port capacity in Ireland by 2025 – 2030
and this would require the expansion of Dublin Port or the development of the
proposed Bremore Port or some equivalent facility to provide additional
capacity for the Irish economy;
4. Both Dublin Ports’ proposed 21h development and the development of new
port capacity such as the proposed Bremore Port would have positive net
present values;
5. Nothing should be done at a policy level to block either the proposed
expansion of Dublin Port or the proposed development of Bremore at this
stage;
6. The proposals for the development of Bremore and Greenore and other ports
combined with the continuation of Dublin Port would have a higher net
economic benefit than the complete closure of Dublin Port;..”
Although the immediate picture is unclear and port traffic is at present declining due to the recession, the expectation, according to the report, is that expansion will be necessary in the longer term and it states that: “we believe that there would be a significant economic cost for Ireland if sufficient port capacity was not available.” This study was conducted under the National Development Plan 2007 -2013 and has been published by the Minister for Transport, Noel Dempsey.
In 2005 240 acres of land in Gormanstown, adjacent to Bremore, were rezoned by Meath County Council for Industrial and logistics development, “due to the potential synergies with the ports development.” In 2008 the joint venture announced its choice of Hutchison Westports Ltd., “the world’s leading port investor, developer and operator” as a partner in forming a Port Master Plan. In September, of this year, the Drogheda Port Company applied to move its boundary southwards to incorporate the Bremore area.
Quo Vadis?
This same area that is marked for the port, besides being a green-field area of great natural beauty, is also the location of a passage tomb complex, a ‘cemetery’ that contains at least five other versions of the nearby, more internationally famed, monuments at Brú na Bóinne. Professor George Eogan, the excavator at Knowth, has spoken out against their assimilation by the proposed development, as has An Taisce and Dr. Mark Clinton, chairman of their national monuments and antiquities committee.
To use the words of Professor Eogan, while speaking to the Balbriggan Historical Society, in 2008; “the area on both sides of the Delvin River from Gormanston to Bremore is a large Megalithic cemetery dating from 3,500BC.” Furthermore, according to local historian Bernard Matthews; “…in the immediate vicinity of the proposed deep-water port, there are the remains of at least five megalithic tombs or burial chambers, while to the north of Bremore there are the remains of at least another six tombs scattered over a wide area from Knocknagin to Lowther Lodge.”
It’s clear then, that something vital will be lost to us, forever, if this plan goes ahead.
Unfortunately, successful challenges to major development, on environmental grounds, are rare and the situation was rendered more problematic lately by a ruling on the Galway city outer bypass road. To quote Mr. Justice George Bermingham, of the High Court; “The (EU Habitats) directive and regulations also made clear, even if the site was adversely affected, it was possible some projects might still proceed for imperative reasons of overriding public interest.” Overriding public interest is maintained by the Indecon study; “a need to develop additional port capacity”, and is what will be claimed for the port development.
Where can we go?
It can be persuasively argued that future economic growth, given finite world fuel and resources, cannot be based on large-scale import-export and that additional port capacity will never be needed. However, the Government, already committed to this concept and locked into a dependency on continuous growth, is unlikely to ignore the study’s recommendations, particularly if key private enterprise players are also involved. Unfettered building fertilised, but ultimately poisoned, the Irish economy and external trade is now being put forward as the only hope of renewal. Much of the wording on Drogheda Port’s website, perhaps tactically, refers to the development as a certainty.
The ratings agency, Fitch, recently marked down Real Estate Oppurtunities Ltd.‘s property portfolio by 40%. John Bruder, managing director of Treasury Ireland, told the Irish Times in August, of this year, that; “It’s our expectation that a lot, if not all, of our portfolio will end up being subsumed into Nama,” or, in other words, that the state will take over the loans that Treasury Holdings owes to the banks. It might therefore be expected that the state, or its government, would have an interest in the success of ventures that it is now funding. Bizarrely, NAMA’s address is ‘Treasury Building, Grand Canal St., Dublin 2’, which is owned by Treasury Holdings. The Drogheda Port Company, like the Dublin Port Company, is already owned by the state.
Despite the recommendation that; “nothing should be done at a policy level to block either the proposed expansion of Dublin Port or the proposed development of Bremore at this stage”, some headway might yet be made. The Indecon study considers the need for additional capacity to be long term, 2020 to 2025, at the earliest and, although insisting that tandem, competing developments would be preferable, implies that the Bremore proposal may not be absolutely necessary. To quote (with my underlines); “this would require the expansion of Dublin Port or the development of the proposed Bremore Port or some equivalent facility to provide additional capacity for the Irish economy”. In the course of the Bord Pleanala inquiry, architect and town planner Terry Durney stated that Bremore was not a natural harbour and was significantly inferior, as a choice, to Dublin Port.
Working against this, as previously suggested, is the fact that the Bremore proposal provides the government with a neat, ready-made and financially advantageous solution, which can be pushed through and to hell with the ancient landscape, by citing the ’national interest’. Aside from any other, as yet unidentified, alternative, the infilling proposal for the extension of Dublin Port poses its own environmental difficulties and is itself strongly opposed, but in this case by potentially useful members of the Dáil.
Eo Romam…
http://againsttheport.webs.com/
These people, I think, deserve our admiration and, everywhere possible, help in their task.
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”
Matthew 16;26
The “Celtic Temple” at Winterbourne Bassett. From William Stukeley’s Itinerarium Curiousum of 1724. Note Silbury in the background
A mile or so along the lane from the White Horse Inn at Winterbourne Bassett are the remains of a stone circle, described by William Stukeley in Abury, a Temple of the British Druids, with Some Others Described of 1724 thus, “At Winterburn-basset, a little north of Abury, in a field north-west of the church, upon elevated ground, is a double circle of stones concentric, 60 cubits diameter. Many of the stones have late been carried away. West of it is a single, broad, flat, and high stone, standing by itself. And about as far northward from the circle, in a ploughed field, is a barrow set round with, or rather compos’d of large stones. I take this double circle to have been a family chapel, as we may call it, to an archdruid dwelling near thereabouts, whilst Abury was his cathedral.”
All that is now visible above ground are three fallen stones in a field. The standing stone on the verge of the T-junction opposite the field was erected in the last decade of the 20th century and was originally pink in colour, indicating that it had probably never formed part of a stone circle.
The Winterbourne Bassett Stone Circle today; only three stones from the circle now remain. Image credit Chris Brooks
This feature first appeared on Avebury Matters and is republished here with the author’s kind permission.
I looked away for a second and when I looked back they were gone.
“Quick lads, he’s not looking, lay down in the crop!”
No, we don’t believe in them either but the following news article in the Telegraph brightens up a rainy day…
A police officer contacted British UFO experts after seeing three aliens examining a freshly made crop circle near Avebury, Wiltshire.
The sergeant, who has not been named, was off-duty when he saw the figures standing in a field near Silbury Hill, and stopped his car to investigate.
However, as he approached the ‘men’ – all over 6ft tall with blond hair – he heard “the sound of static electricity” and the trio ran away ”faster than any man he had ever seen”.
The officer returned to his home in Marlborough, Wiltshire, and contacted paranormal experts and told them he had spotted a UFO…
The Circus – Bath
John Wood the Elder – Stanton Drew Circle and Stonehenge.
Bath is famed for its neo-classical architecture but what underpins the thinking of the 18th century architect John Wood when he drew the designs for The Circus is a strange mish-mash of legend and myth, this of course is the age of the new ‘druidism’ that took hold when such figures as William Stukeley called such places as Stonehenge the Druidical Temple.
Fertile imaginations played with the ideas of sacrificial wicker constructions filled with victims, and Wood took it much further and in his book - A Description of Bath, he writes a history for Bath that is at once absurd yet full of that energetic imaginings that are still to be found in today’s new age books.
To understand why Wood designed The Circus as he did one must go back to the myths that formed the literature of the 18th century. Wood, though including neo-classical forms in the building, was not returning to a Roman past but a pre-Roman past steeped in the myths of a Britannic origin. The myth can be found in the 12th century writings of Geoffrey of Monmouthshire, and according to (R. S. Neal – Bath, A Social History) a 16th century edition of Monmouth’s book written in Paris was very much alive in the oral tradition of Bath. Putting stone circles and Druids together seems rather strange, but Wood thought that the chief ensign of the Druids was a ring.
So as he began to plan his city on paper, he incorporated the pagan elements, but also he was relating the pagan symbol of the circle back to Jewish symbolism, therefore Christian, and then British and Greek, which led quite nicely to the “Divine Architect” who was of course God. This is all creative flummery, a mixing of ideas, so when we look at The Circus we see classical lines, but with little touches of druidism – in the acorns that sit atop the surrounds of the roofs – and the frieze which incorporates specific symbols of Masonic details.
First though must come the story of Bladud, the founding father of Bath, an exiled prince because of his leprosy, whilst out herding pigs one day happened to notice that the pigs loved to roll in the hot muds of the spring. Bladud also tried this and was cured, and then went on to found the city of Bath on the spot. Our mythical King Bladud is given a date of 480 BC, and as Wood saw it Bladud created the city about the size of Babylon. Bladud was a descendant of a Trojan prince, a high priest of Apollo and a ‘Master of Pythagoras’. Therefore this high priest was a devotee of the heliocentric systems of the planets from which the Pythagorean system was derived. That the Works of Stantondriu (Stanton Drew) form a perfect model of the Pythagorean system of the planetary world…………
At Stanton Drew it must have taken him many hours, with his assistant wandering round taking measurements of the circles, which were probably at this time partly covered in orchards. There was a precedence for this fascination with megalithic stones, Stukeley and Inigo Jones were all entranced by these heathen stones of an earlier age, and the development of myths round druidic religions were already forming and capturing imaginative minds – a bit like today.
Now Stanton Drew was, according to Wood, the university for British Druids, which thereby made Bath the metropolitan city seat of the British Druids. ‘And since there is an apparent connection between the ancient works of Akmanchester (Bath) and those of Stantondriu, it seems manifest that the latter constituted the University of the British Druids; that this was the university which King Bladud, according to Merlyn of Caledon planted; that it was at Stantondrui the king feated his four Athenian colleagues and that they were not only the heads of the British Druids in those early ages, but, under Bladud, the very founder of them‘
The Circus is based on a diameter of 318 feet, Wood’s rough measurements of the circumference of the stone circle at Stonehenge, the terraced houses form a perfect circle around a ‘timber’ circle of planted trees in the centre. There is an early drawing by J.R.Cozens which shows hitching stone post for the horses arranged symmetrically round the The Circus which would give the allusion of stones.
Wood also incorporated into his thinking the hills around Bath, giving them various titles such as Sun and Moon Hill, and The Parade is also aligned on Solsbury Hill which had an Iron Age settlement on top. The Royal Crescent built by his son John Wood the Younger, was crescent shaped representing the moon.
Where you might ask is the masonic symbolism, well it is only seen from the air, taking The Circus as the round part of the key walk down Gay Street to Queens Square which is square, and you will see the ‘key’ of Bath.
Ref - R. S. Neal – Bath, A Social History.
John Wood – A Description of Bath, 1765.
Tom Robinson
William Stukeley (1687-1765) felt sufficient disgust at the destruction of the stones at Avebury to parody farmer Tom Robinson by christening him “The Herostratus of Avebury” and producing this tailpiece for his Aubury book in 1743. On the left smoke rises from one of the burning pits where the stones were first heated and then dowsed with water to crack them. A bat hangs ominously above Robinson, while on his right a hag presides over the dark and tragic scene of even more stones awaiting destruction.
Tom Robinson’s headstone is in Avebury’s churchyard.
More here – http://www.avebury-web.co.uk/the_shame.html
and from the H M J Underhill Archive here -
Our new Stonehenge Visitor centre at Stonehenge
We think our simple design for the new Visitor Centre at Stonehenge is both sympathetic to the historical setting of the monument and also sufficiently far away from it so as to not intrude on the Stonehenge ‘experience’. We are aware that its size might be a cause for concern and its facilities somewhat lacking – that, however, is something visitors to Stonehenge have become accustomed to over many decades.
A J Exclusive: Images of new Stonehenge Visitor Centre
There has been a lot of controversy over the new visitor centre at Stonehenge, but one thing that stands out is its ‘understatement’ in the landscape and maybe that’s no bad thing. Love it or hate it the architects, Denton Corker Marshall have probably arrived at a fairly amicable solution…
Our proposal, above all, seeks not to compromise the solidity and timelessness of the Stones, but to satisfy the brief with a design which is universally accessible, environmentally sensitive, and at the same time appears almost transitory in nature.
And the further comment that ’If once back at home, a visitor can remember their visit to the stones but can’t remember the visitor centre they passed through on the way, we will be happy’ maybe reflects the true intention of the designers.
Drombeg Stone Circle, Co. Cork
Drombeg, Co. Cork, an evocative example of the size and rough shape of the proposed stone circle at Mike Parker Pearson’s Bluestonehenge. The diameter here, at 9 metres, is just 1 metre less than that at the latter. You should bear in mind, however, that there are 17 stones at Drombeg, rather than 25, so the arrangement at Bluestonehenge, unless the stones were very narrow there, would have been much tighter.
by Gordon Kingston, Heritage Action
The Derrynaflan Chalice - Image by Kglavin (Wikimedia Commons)
One swallow does not a summer make, nor one fine day, nor does one shining, glorious hoard make up for all the information lost, or heritage sold.
It’s been interesting to observe the goings-on in Staffordshire, from an Irish viewpoint. Unlicensed metal detecting has been illegal here since 1987 and oddly, it was the finding of an item worthy of the hoard, the chalice at Derrynaflan, and the subsequent demand of millions for it, that prompted the legislation in the first place. What’s the name for that? Grabbing something that already belongs to someone else and demanding money to give it back? Kidnapping? A recent Irish Times article quotes Professor Muiris Ó Súilleabháin, senior lecturer in the school of archaeology at UCD:
“Although many individuals were highly responsible, it was not unknown for archaeologists to discover holes dug into monuments in search of potential treasure pinpointed by metal detectors… It had been a close shave (referring to The Supreme Court decision against the awarding of €5.5 million for the chalice) and it was in this atmosphere that the 1987 National Monuments (Amendment) Act was passed as a stop-gap initiative to prevent a free-for-all.”
In the wake of the publicity given to this Staffordshire discovery, however, it was only a matter of time before someone here in Ireland would start to mutter, about similar opportunities being prevented by our “prohibitive” legislation:
“I think that 90 per cent of people who go metal detecting do it because of a love of history and not for monetary gain… I think there would be a lot more involved in Ireland were it not for the laws.” says an amateur treasure hunter in the same feature.
You know, I think that a lot of people would do a lot of things if they weren’t against the law, but then, that’s the point of laws. The good of the whole of society and so on. And this noble detector angle, with human nature being what it is? I’m sorry. We love a short cut, or an easy euro and as soon as the whistle blew there’d be spades flying into every cased ancient monument in the country. Where’d you get it history lover? Oh, in a field?
No. We might miss the occasional swallow, but the preservation of all of our resource is more important than that. Things, I think, are best left the way that they are.
“The bottom line here is that if you dig out a find from a site, you destroy part of the heritage of Ireland.”
- Eamonn Kelly, keeper of Irish antiquities at the National Museum of Ireland
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/weekend/2009/1003/1224255768813.html
by Alex Langstone, Heritage Action’s Cornwall correspondent
On 16th June 2009 Spirit of Albion website reported that Battery Rocks and Sandy Cove in Penzance had been given a reprieve from development. Sadly I can now report that once again the sacred holy headland where Penzance began is once again under threat.
Penzance councillor Tamsin Williams is trying to raise the profile of this important campaign, as much scare-mongering has taken place by the pro-development lobby recently. It must be remembered however that this headland, site of the long lost St Anthony’s Chapel, where the founding-fathers of this community worshipped; the nearby historic harbour (pictured above) and the unique art-deco Jubilee Pool, are of immense historical, cultural and archaeological importance. If we allow the developers in, it will all be lost forever!
Please write to Andrew George MP here to voice your concerns.
See here for the original article written for Heritage Action in November 2008.
See here for Save the Holy Headland website.
Above: The remains of an ancient dark-age cross found close to Battery Rocks. What other Cornish cultural treasures await discovery at this ancient sacred headland? If the Route Partnership have their way we will never find out!
Those stony backs. A scrum around a whisper:
Hush. Hiss. Who?
Why won’t they let you in? No, it’s a
secret secret
won’t tell YOU . . .
A playground wide as Wessex. Wire barbs
the wind whines through.
You’d wait a hundred years and couldn’t ask.
It’s secret secret
won’t tell YOU.
Don’t dare. You dare yourself to dare
and then you do.
They turn and . . . What’s the game? You are.
And it’s Sticks And Stones
and you’re on your own
and it’s Piggy in the Middle
and the piggy is YOU.
Philip Goss
Poulnabrone Dolmen - Image by Jon Sullivan http://pdphoto.org/
Have you ever noticed the work of amateur artists, copies left standing beneath the masters’ work in public art galleries? For generations prospective artists and schoolchildren have gone to study and paint the great monuments of art, painting and sculpture, in museums like the Louvre in Paris and the National Gallery in London, using materials such as colour and paper, or canvas, often a replication of the media used before them.
The ambition to mould life from paint, or, paraphrasing Michelangelo, to carve stone away from the life trapped within, is a common one and there have been occasional artist alchemists; Michelangelo, Rembrandt, late Raphael, the mature Cezanne, whose work seems to live, more than this, move and sing, with the motion of creation before your eyes.
It is difficult however, to imagine any of these amateur copyists turning, if they are studying a statue, to the nearest pillar or wall and starting to chisel away in imitation, or marking out their work in paint on the floor, or over a nearby masterpiece. Yet, in the Burren, in the area around Poulnabrone, the huge leaning cap and slender pillars of the Neolithic portal dolmen are, unbelievably, being copied just so, by using chunks of the delicate local landscape.
“The tourists erecting the dolmens are engaging in a form of vandalism. This is a wonderful ecosystem and the erection of these dolmens is like scribbling on a masterpiece… Unique and vulnerable habitats are being destroyed by visitors when they illegally remove protected limestone pavement to build the dolmens.”
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/visitors-vandalising-burren-with-stone-shapes-1901158.html
Innocent, perhaps and indicative of how powerful a symbol these dolmens are, still singing their enciphered lays of creation, but more obvious instruction must surely be provided for visitors, before it’s too late.
Wiltshire Heritage Museum. Image credit Willow
“Wiltshire Heritage Museum has been awarded £4,500 by the Association for Independent Museums Sustainability Fund. This welcome funding boost will enable the Museum to employ a part-time fundraiser to increase its income.”
Applications for the fundraiser post are now open. The Job Description and Application Pack and the Application Form are now available online from the Documents section of the Wiltshire Heritage Museum website. Deadline for applications is 9am on Friday, 9 October 2009. More here – http://www.wiltshireheritage.org.uk/news/?Action=8&id=84&home=1
Wiltshire Heritage Museum has also started to catalogue and digitise all the books in its Library http://www.wiltshireheritage.org.uk/library/ onto the Google library – 5000 so far in five months. The fully digitised versions (Full view) are still few in number but there are also some Limited previews. Phil Harding’s YouTube has an enthusiastic introduction to the Library here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qqU8owM4BQ
Recently an e-petition was put on the government website regarding the reburial of bones at Stonehenge, the petition has now closed and the government response is given below.
Details of Petition:
“There is currently a huge archaeological dig taking place at Stonehenge (The Riverside Project) August/September 2008. The Senior Archaeologists concerned – Mike Pitts, Julian Richards and Mike Parker Pearson are looking at several areas at Stonehenge including the Aubrey Holes specifically No.7 which contains the remains of up to 50 bodies – The Guardians of Stonehenge. These archaeologists have removed these remains from the ground and they have been sent away for analysis. They will give no confirmation that these remains will be returned to their resting place at Stonehenge. Much can be learned from archaeological testing but, the fact that these remains could end there days in a box is wrong. These bodies were buried at Stonehenge by our ancestors for a reason and have lain there for thousands of years. This is an issue that effects all of us the world over, there is no difference in archaeologists going into Mecca and removing the stones, or going in to Vatican City and disinterring a Pope. These are the bones of this country’s ancestors and should be returned to the ground at Stonehenge.”
Government’s response
“Thank you for your e-petition. A licence for the removal of human remains at Stonehenge was granted by the Ministry of Justice in May 2008. One of the conditions of the licence was that the remains should be reinterred within two years and that in the intervening period they should be kept safely, privately and decently. In April 2008, the Ministry of Justice issued a statement entitled ‘Burial Law and Archaeology’ to clarify the basis on which applications for the exhumation of human remains for archaeological examination would be treated – this can be accessed at http://www.justice.gov.uk/guidance/burials.htm. This makes clear that licences would be issued with time limits for re-burial but where there was a legitimate need for remains to be kept for longer, it would be possible to apply for an extension. The Government recognises that some people have strongly held beliefs with regards to human remains, but believes that these need to be balanced against the legitimate public interest in the scientific study of ancient human remains and the educational and historic value that such remains can provide. The Ministry of Justice is currently reviewing burial law and looking at possible changes in order to reflect contemporary attitudes and sensibilities towards human remains. We expect to consult on any proposals in due course.“
Wayland's Smithy in Autumn 2006
This longbarrow was excavated by Richard Atkinson and Stuart Piggott in the years 1962-63. They seems to have uncovered two periods. Period 1; This was a barrow containing a wooden mortuary hut shaped like a ridge tent, but with a sarsen stone floor. Here some fourteen bodies had been laid, some articulated, others with limbs separated – probably due to the practice of excarnation. When the hut was full sarsen stones were placed around it, and chalk from ditches on either side was piled on top. The mound being kept in position by a kerb of boulders.
Period 11; Consists of the mound that is now visible 54.9 metres long by 14.6 m at the front tapering to 6.1. m at the back. The front facade originally contained 6 great sarsen stones, each about 9 foot high, at the back was the passageway with a chamber on either side.
In the restoration work drystone walling was used to fill the gaps between the stones. Apparently an earlier excavation in 1919, found in the left hand chamber 8 skeletons including 1 child. The latest excavation of 1962 showed that the final barrow was excavated from ditches on either side of the mound and was held in place by a continuous kerb of sarsens. Radio carbon dating at this time was between 3700 and 3400 bc.
The two missing stones beside the entrance are marked by irregular dry-stone walling. There seems to have been a rather more formalised interpretation in the ‘restoration’ work in which the flanks of the barrow were sharply revetted to form walls. Now, in 2007, the mound has acquired a graceful curve with what remains of the kerbing stone sitting comfortably in the ground. The work was done by the DoE, and it is well to remember that ‘neatness’ in the restoration work, may not necessarily give a true final picture..
The following photograph taken in 1930 shows how Wayland’s Smithy looked before restoration, a jumble of facade stones, and it is well to remember that West Kennet Longbarrow was in a similar state and also underwent the same work at the hands of the above two archaeologists. Both monuments are magnificient reminders of Neolithic stone construction, so perhaps in the end we should welcome such restorations which give us a better understanding of these longbarrows.
Ref: An Archaeological Guide to Southern England; Gen.Ed. Glyn Daniels 1973.
Diary of a Dean
Being an account of the
EXAMINATION OF SILBURY HILL
and of
VARIOUS BARROWS AND OTHER EARTHWORKS ON THE DOWNS OF NORTH WILTS
Opened and Investigated in the Months of July & August 1849
By Dean John Merewether
With illustrations
An online edition of the book is here
An ammonite set to the left of the entrance to the Stoney Littleton Long Barrow. Image credit Heritage Action
The work, which has been funded by English Heritage as part of its National Mapping Programme, has created a highly detailed map of Exmoor’s archaeology.
One of the most interesting finds was a possible neolithic or Bronze Age enclosure on Little Hangman Hill, Combe Martin. Although impossible to be completely accurate as to its age, it is similar when compared with other sites thought to be around that date on Dartmoor and Bodmin.
The aerial mapping of Exmoor is a useful tool for discovering new sites, and the above prehistoric site at Little Hangman Hill proves that there is still plenty to discover beneath these ancient moors.
Two more recent finds on Exmoor are of interest and to quote English Heritage….The prehistoric stone monuments on Exmoor are evocative monuments: geometric arrangements of sandstone slabs sited in remote combes; tall standing stones on open moor and stone rows, they give a tantalising glimpse into a remote past.
In 2006 Celia Haddon discovered a new stone row on Exmoor, at the time only eight stone rows had been found on the moors. The row was found at Warcombe Water, on the ridge there were fifteen small sandstone slabs each carefully set upright in a long line.
The other find of a small standing stone at Codsend Moor, also reveals a prehistoric relict field system together with huts, cairns and standing stones.
As the prehistoric past of Britain slowly reveals itself in standing stones and burial cairns it is a humbling experience to realise that this small island had a prehistoric existence we know so little of, when the only materials of the land were stone, timber and flint for tools, neolithic people carved and created not only their livelihoods from the earth but took time to erect stones, whether large or small to symbolise a meaning to them we cannot hope to catch, and here on Exmoor caught in the tough wild grasses of the moor small stones nestle tracing a mysterious past that is lost forever.
Image credit Heritage Action
by Gordon Kingston, Heritage Action
Almost the ‘end of the road‘, the 90% completed stage, for the construction of the M3 motorway and two Irish Times articles on the subject have been highlighted by Vincent Salafia and Tarawatch.
http://www.tarawatch.org/?p=1332
It has been a long struggle for those who campaigned and protested, with fingers pressed desperately into the dam:
“No protesters are currently blocking or picketing any part of the motorway, and Vincent Salafia of Tarawatch said that such action is unlikely to recur. “The frontline part of the campaign is pretty much over. There are people still protesting in the area, but not on the front line of the road. At this stage any protest on the road would be a largely symbolic gesture, but that doesn’t mean the campaign is over.”
Recent changes to the criminal trespass laws had made such protests more difficult, Mr Salafia said, but he said Tarawatch was continuing to campaign against the road…”
The law, as we have seen before in the 2004 amendment to the National Monuments Act, seems mutable whenever it comes into conflict with construction interests.
The two pieces refer to the greatest foci of controversy as follows:
“…the route runs just over 2km from the Hill of Tara, and adjacent to the Lismullin national monument and the hill fort of Rath Lugh…
…The road does not go through the fort, but skirts it incredibly closely, to the extent that a “crib wall” has been constructed against the fort wall to secure the earthen structure. The road also skirts the national monument at Lismullin. As this site has already been preserved and covered by a farm access road, nothing remains to be seen.”
However, Mr Salafia has made these corrections to the information:
“- the M3 is not 2km away from Tara, but 1km from the crest of the Hill
- the M3 more than ’skirts’ Lismullin national monument. The NRA demolished the site, despite being warned by the European Commission not to
- Rath Lugh marks the edge of the Tara complex, and the M3 ’skirts’ inside, rather than outside Rath Lugh, which is also a national monument”
There is a great destructive force in any inundation; whether of concrete, asphalt or water and there should surely be an awareness of the full extent of it in Meath. It’s an easy option to settle the protestors in your mind as a bunch of fanatics, people who could only see the issue in black and white. Then conveniently let it slip away into oblivion. Phrases like ‘skirts closely’, ’2km from the Hill’ and ’preserved’, while indicating that something happened, fail to demonstrate the true level of demolition and hint, perhaps, that there was a bit of an overreaction. Uninformed, knee-jerk opposition to what NRA spokesman Seán O’Neill refers to as “the construction of a new, safe, value for money motorway.”
These monuments were irretrievably damaged, however, in some cases destroyed and for what? The route chosen wasn’t the only possibility, but viable alternatives were dismissed without a second look. In hindsight and given the collapse of the economy, the motorway itself may not even have been necessary. Some people obviously thought so. As has recently been revealed, Eurolink were given a minimum traffic guarantee, which surely indicates prior consideration, if not expectation, of low usage levels.
Anyone with half an eye on national events will concede that this is a country where the elite are in and out of each others pockets, smoothing their respective ways along. You wouldn’t have to be particularly conspiracy-minded to smell something fishy in the alterations of laws when they prove inconvenient to ’progress’. Or the swift ’about-face’ of the Greens when they arrived in Government. Why was this route and project, opposed by the EU, prominent archaeologists and a significant body of the public, untouchable?
…and how much is it going to end up costing? The more I think about this issue, the more it’s bugging me.
First we have Vincent Salafia:
“Mr Salafia has criticised the cost to the taxpayer of the motorway. He said this will amount to €727.4 million over the life of the toll contract with Eurolink, which ends in 2052.”
Swiftly put back in his place by our National Roads Authority spokesman Seán O’Neill:
“In fact only €250 million is being paid up front; the rest of the cost is being borne by the contractor . . . Distorting the figures doesn’t benefit the public…”
However, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General, a presumably impartial authority:
“…the tolled M3 Clonee to Kells motorway, which is due to open next year, will cost taxpayers €727.4m in total over the next 42 years.”
Does the €250 million “up front” not include the cost of maintaining the roads? Is the remainder of the €727.4 million, “borne by the contractor”, “in fact” repayable to them in instalments? How can you get from one figure to the other?
Who, exactly, is doing the distorting in this situation?
199 Steps to Nowhere
Visitors to the world-famous abbey at Whitby are in for a big surprise. Unless they’re members of English Heritage they’ll be expected to cough up an entrance fee of £5.50 for adults, £2.80 for children – nearly 17 quid for mum, dad and the two kids! Is this the right and proper way to encourage people to discover more about England’s heritage? But, assuming an entrance fee is justified, why are these charges (and a sign showing where access to the abbey is) not clearly visible to people approaching the monument from the town and up the famous 199 steps (steps mentioned by Bram Stoker who, in the late 1890s, wrote part of his Dracula novel at Whitby. In the novel, Count Dracula is shipwrecked but, assuming the form of a large dog, rushes up the 199 steps to St. Mary’s Church, there to take refuge in the unconsecrated grave of a suicide victim).
These Heritage Action correspondents found themselves spending half an hour walking round the perimeter of the abbey grounds (from the top of the 199 steps) trying to find an entrance to the abbey itself before finally returning back to the English Heritage shop where they were informed that the entrance was now through the shop or the carpark (where an entrance fee would be charged).
Let’s hope English Heritage manage to get their house in order at Whitby Abbey before embarking on a similar visitor centre at Stonehenge. A failure at Stonehenge similar to that miraculously achieved by English Heritage at Whitby Abbey would, surely, be proof positive that English Heritage is not fit for purpose, should be dismantled and then put back together again in a shape more worthy of the millions of pounds of tax-payers’ money it consumes at present. Should anyone doubt the ineptitude of English Heritage it might be worthwhile mentioning the six million of our pounds it has spent to date on its non-materialising plans for a visitor centre at Stonehenge – not to mention the fiasco last year when English Heritage was advocating the placement of a ‘time capsule’ at the centre of the Silbury Hill prehistoric monument in Wiltshire! A banana republic would achieve better results for its heritage.
English Heritage or Heritage Bunglers? Now you have a chance to ask them yourselves (see below). Oops, sorry, pre-selected questions only. Those questions wouldn’t be pre-selected would they to ensure they don’t contain any awkward words like ‘Thornborough’, ‘Silbury Time Capsule’, ‘faux public consultations’, ‘Ribbon’, ‘Bond’s Garage’ and a ’70 million pound vanity palace’ at Stonehenge?
At last a chance to address some fundamental heritage problems, hopefully…
Put Your Question to Heritage Leaders
What do you think are the most important issues facing England’s heritage? Is it funding? Is it the reform of heritage protection? Is it the development pressures facing our historic towns and cities? Is it how we present our castles and country houses or how we look after local conservation areas? English Heritage invites you to join the audience for a panel discussion involving Baroness Andrews, newly appointed Chair of English Heritage, Sir Simon Jenkins, Chairman of the National Trust, Anthea Case, Chair of Heritage Link, Tom Dyckhoff, journalist and broadcaster and Dame Jenny Abramsky, Chair of the Heritage Lottery Fund. The debate will be chaired by Martha Kearney, Presenter of BBC Radio 4’s World at One. Heritage Question Time will be at 6.30pm, Wednesday 21 October, at the Royal Institute of British Architecture, 66 Portland Place, London W1B 1AD.
To apply for free tickets or to submit a question, please email heritagecounts2009@english-heritage.org.uk by 9 October. People whose questions are chosen will be invited to come and ask them in person on the night. But you do not have to submit a question, you can just come and hear the discussion. Tickets will be given out on a first come, first served basis, so apply now!
For further information, please contact: Katy Payne, Events Manager, English Heritage;
Katy.payne@english-heritage.org.uk
020 7973 3860
Under a safe and ancient overhang
stony raindrops
spreading their unfathomable pattern
across the world
across the ages.
Dropped and patiently chipped away
in an unmoving pool of stone.
In an unresolved pond of another reality.
[Image and words by Heritage Action members]
Dr Stan Beckinsall’s account of this remarkable place (reproduced with his kind permission) is here:
“On Chatton Park Hill there is an enormous panel of rock art with a dominant view across the river Till right through to the Cheviot Hills. This site has been known since the 19th century, so it isn’t my discovery, but the complexity of it, the sheer volume of concentric circles, that the largest figure having concentric circles up to about a metre in diameter, is quite breathtaking. But the most important thing about Chatton Park Hill is its position in the landscape, because it is totally dominant as a viewpoint. Now, on the side of that hill is a site that we call Ketley Crag. It’s actually a natural rock overhang, and it was discovered quite recently that the floor was covered with cup and ring marks. And again like the best of the rock art, the people who made these have taken into account the natural formation of the rock itself, the indentations, and they have produced, what is by any standards, a work of art. Now what is interesting thing is that we have several rock shelters in Northumberland which have produced burials of the Early Bronze Age. We can’t actually date rock art itself, and here at Ketley Crag we have something of a mystery because the floor of the rock shelter doesn’t seem to have contained any burials. The site was excavated, incidentally, by badgers who live in the rock behind the rock shelter. In fact when I was recording this site by making a rubbing, I could hear them all busily at work at the back there. There was snow all around me but the floor of the rock shelter was dry, so this site has another important context for me, namely the time when I actually recorded it. Again it’s got a superb view, right down a stream valley running into the River Till and across to the hills.”
An audio version can also be accessed here, courtesy Newcastle University:
http://rockart.ncl.ac.uk/interactive/outreach/interactive_outreach_audio.htm
The sensitive archaeology of the Bremore area can be “worked around” according to John Bruder, Treasury Holdings’ managing director for Ireland.
There’s only a small pleasure to be had in being cynical about this type of announcement. Much greater are the feelings of despair, irritation, even anger, that it provokes. I’d really rather not have to think about or react to it, but things in Ireland are the way that they are.
Our quotes of the week have often tended to be in the form of these gob-smacked reactions, to the latest line of blatant falsity or misrepresentation. The dripping grease on the burgers being shoved down the public throat, if you will. John Bruder’s reassurance, uttered back in March, follows one such formula. The ‘what are you getting all het up about? We’ll look after it’ approach. There are many others and I’m sure that we’ll all get well used to them before this is finished; ‘major job creation‘, ‘no other options for a deepwater port‘, ‘just the boost the country needs at this time’ and so on. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, or so they say.
Ok. Just in case you’re tempted to trust John’s intentions and think, “Well, that’s me off so. What the hell are we worried about at all? Stick a fence around the old lumps and bumps and everything’s sorted”, have a read of the excellent, funny and accurate article below. If I could fit the whole thing into a quote of the week I would, just to celebrate the truth for one week. It‘s a nice feeling now and again:
http://blather.net/blather/2009/09/what_do_the_bremore_passage_tomb_complex.html
“…Ah now, An Taisce, hold on there just a minute. Don’t you know that there’s no need for one of them things at all, at all. Sure everyone knows that the Irish government, or any of its tentacled organs, never publishes an actual, independent Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), at least not one that disagrees on its ‘preferred’ route, I mean, option. The portions of the original EIS it left out of the (2001) Halcrow Barry Report on the M3’s route picking selection, was nothing more then an attempt to save the environment. It was already fierce long altogether, so it was…”
Early reactions to the proposed design are ominous, to say the least. http://www.bdonline.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=426&storycode=3148497&channel=783&c=1&encCode=0000000001a18b02
“It’s cheap and nasty and isn’t going to do justice to the site. It looks like an immigration detention centre. It’s not something that makes you feel part of something ancient and mystic. “We should be building something to last. We should have had an international competition.” Paul Sample, former mayor of Salisbury
And perhaps more authoritatively:
“This looks like an IT student’s first attempt at rendered graphics. It’s amateurish and causes one to wonder about the quality of the finished product. “If you only get the detailed images at the time of the planning application you can’t give a balanced critical opinion on the suitability of the design. From this image that just has to be no.” Peter Alexander-Fitzgerald, a member of the International Council on Monuments & Sites
As Mr Alexander-Fitzgerald implies, it is perhaps too early to panic. Only when the full planning application is submitted will we be able to judge if the building is of the “world class” that the government has promised.
“The world’s great museums continue to unveil and show off ravishing new antiquities, especially from the Classical world. Where do these treasures come from? In a growing scandal, it becomes increasingly clear these are not forgotten curios, excavated long ago and recently gathering dust in the attics of Swiss bankers, but new finds recently looted and illicitly exported from their countries of origin. Why? How?
“And what will be the consequences?”
An illustrated lecture by Dr Christopher Chippindale, Reader in Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, will be held at the Wiltshire Heritage Museum, Devizes on Saturday, 19 December 2009 from 2:30pm.
More here -
http://www.wiltshireheritage.org.uk/events/index.php?Action=2&thID=449&prev=3&catID=4
Dartmoor is justly famous for its prehistoric monuments; stone circles, burial cairns, hut circles and stone rows are part of the prehistoric heritage that make up the moor.
An interesting article in the September/October British Archaeology called ‘Dartmoor’s Vanishing Archaeology’ and written by Tom Greeves highlights the problem that occurs when animal grazing is drastically reduced on the moors due to several factors such as farmers leaving the land, official policy drawn up by DEFRA and Natural England with a confusing range of terms and conditions that bind the upland farmers under the Agricultural Policy. Heather is seen as the natural flora of the moors by the powers that be, but with it comes gorse as well and archaeological monuments start to disappear under all this growth.
Stone rows, of which there are 80 examples, as well as cairns and stone circles become lost in this thick vegetation and the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photographs in the article give a pretty stark message. The Brisworthy stone circle is one such site highlighted, but it is the small stones that make up the long stone rows that soon become invisible.
Tom Greeves argues rightly that Dartmoor has been farmed since the sixth millennium BC and that the cultural tradition of farming the moors with sheep, cattle and horses should not be lost to a perceived present cultural whim, which dictates what is natural in the landscape, and that though wild and open in appearance it has been farmed to some degree over the centuries. He also raise an interesting point that the protection of our scheduled ancient monuments which is site specific fails to take into account the wider landscape, something that Heritage Action has long spoken out about.
An interesting book on the subject of the Bronze Age Dartmoor Reaves (ruined walls) first published in 1988 gives a detailed examination of Dartmoor’s large scale, planned, prehistoric landscapes and which has now been republished with an extra two chapters.
Andrew Fleming – The Dartmoor Reaves; Investigating Prehistoric Land Divisions. ISBN 9781905119158 April 2008
Some further developments in the Bremore Port story, complete with, I’m afraid, a depressing reminder of Tara and the ’unsuitable alternative routes for the M3′ claim.
An architect and town planner has stated that it would be a “significantly inferior” choice to an infilled Dublin Port, for diversion of container services and that the proposal “was based on the misconception that a port at Bremore actually exists”:
“…according to Mr Durney, Bremore was not a natural harbour and would require large-scale engineering works, and even then he claimed it had been suggested the port “could be vulnerable in northeasterly winds in the same way that Rosslare is.”
As well as the serious archaeological concerns, he also mentioned the poor road and rail connections, in comparison to Dublin Port:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0905/1224253908098.html
Secondly, for those of a nervous disposition, the Drogheda Independent reports that:
“People who have gone into the Garda Station to consult the application have been informed by the Gardai that the file may not be copied or photographed and must be viewed in the presence of the Gardai and that you must sign your name to a register which will be passed on to the Drogheda Port Company after the consultation period has ended,..”
http://www.drogheda-independent.ie/news/bremore-port-1876002.html
I don’t know what to say. Apart from the vulnerability of the passage tombs, there’s such a heavy whiff here of all that went wrong with this country. Please, if you can, object.
A previous article referred to the fall-off in road-building excavations, in the wake of the crash of the Irish Economy. Discoveries in this area are continuing to come to our attention, however and a number were described at a recent NRA archaeology seminar.
Among the findings highlighted were a Mesolithic fishing trap, found on the controversial M3 works, in Co. Meath and a complex of Late Neolithic and Bronze Age wooden track-ways (toghers) and platforms, that ran through a raised bog, on the route of the N4, in Longford. These latter excavations also revealed the remains of bowls, spears and wheels, one of which, dated to the Late Bronze Age, was suggested to be the oldest wheel yet found in Ireland.
Most interesting, for me at least, was the investigation that found the original shape of a mound in Co. Tipperary was delimited, during the Neolithic, by a palisade and augmented with several additional layers of soil. Just how special is that? While palisaded enclosures are not uncommon, the encirclement of an artificially enhanced hill is notable and it is hard to resist a wandering of the mind, despite difference in scale, towards the Silbury area, in England*. The townland name; Tullahedy, ‘Tulach Éide’, can be translated, tantalisingly, as ‘the dressed hill’. Over 3000 stone tools and 144 polished stone axe heads were also found.
Overall, a “more extensive and intensive settlement”, than had previously been suspected, was suggested by the range of Neolithic pottery recovered in the course of the road-work excavations. The Irish Times summary can be found in the link immediately below, followed by a link to a feature on the Mesolithic fishing basket.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0828/1224253402303.html
*For a discussion of palisaded enclosures see; Gibson A. 1998 Hindwell and the Neolithic Palisade Sites of Britain and Ireland. In Gibson A.& Simpson D. (eds.) Prehistoric Ritual and Religion, 68-79. Sutton ISBN 0-7509-1598-6
For their occasional coincidence with exterior mounds see; Bradley R. 2007 The Prehistory of Britain and Ireland, 128-132. Cambridge ISBN 0-521-61270-8
Orkneyjar News
An introduction to a fascinating excavation, under the supervision of Nick Card of the Orkney Research Centre For Archaeology (ORCA) which has been going on for several years on the island of Orkney. The archaeological excavation this summer has finally uncovered a large Neolithic building that is being hailed as a Neolithic ‘Cathedral’.
It’s impressive, 25 metres long by 20 wide, standing to a height of 1 metre after excavation and there is talk that it might have been roofed. To understand the context of this building the word ‘temple’ might be a better explanation, it stands between two great megalithic sites, The Standing Stones of Stenness and the Ring o’ Brodgar - the third largest stone circle in the British Isles.
This article by Sigmund Towries of Orkneyjar gives an excellent long description of the excavation, a reminder of a past when megalithic stones were the crowning glory of a long dead religious belief.
Whoops been downgraded to a village hall - 19th September 2009
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/scotland/article6801292.ece
Culture minister Barbara Follett has announced a £150,000 grant for the Wiltshire Heritage Museum in Devizes. The grant will be used to create a new Bronze Age Gallery to house material excavated from the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.
More here -
and here -
“False face must hide what the false heart doth know”
Some time ago I wrote briefly, referring to the mistreated state of the passage tombs at Bremore and the disquieting sound; “the slow rumble of something much larger coming up the road”. Months have since passed and I have slept from it, I suppose, soothed by each gravelling halt, the collapse of the building sector, the deepening recession. Foolishly optimistic, when I reflect on it now, as this may be one of the last shows left in town.
The Irish Times of 2nd September 2009 reported:
“AN TAISCE has warned that the proposed deepwater port at Bremore, north Co Dublin, could threaten an archaeological complex of passage tombs even older than Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth in the Boyne Valley.
The environmental trust was commenting yesterday on plans by Drogheda Port to extend its boundary southwards so as to incorporate Bremore for development of the deepwater port in partnership with Treasury Holdings.”
It’s an opaque fuzz, as you might have expected. No details of the extension plan, unless you visit Drogheda Garda Station. No environmental assessment available and no proper public consultation. Objections now have only until Tuesday (8th September) to be submitted. Doubtless the faces of government will come cosmeticized with the usual; the national good and talk of jobs and infrastructure, although I think that we might have seen and heard that type of thing before. And all for nothing.
According to Dr. Mark Clinton, chairman of An Taisce’s National Monuments and Antiquities Committee:
“…it is far more appropriate that the World Heritage Site of Brú na Bóinne would be extended to include the Bremore-Gormanston complexes rather than their obliteration as a result of an ‘extension’ for ‘development’ of Drogheda Port.”
I was reminded tonight, reading this and oddly, of the words of Seneca as he describes Marcus Cato. I had to look them up, to get it right:
“…Cato, that living pattern of the virtues, has to fall on his sword to show the world what is happening to himself and the state at the same time;..”
Our sacrifice is not great, in comparison. I will put a link, below, to the Bremore website where there is an objection template to copy, sign and send to the accompanying address, before next Tuesday. The forces are powerful but we must try, at least. Try not to stand by and let it happen again.
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/ireland/2009/0902/1224253663259.html
Template for objection: http://www.bremore.blogspot.com/
Email address for objection: garret.doocey@transport.ie
Mail address as detailed in the Irish Times article.
In a week in which Stonehenge has been condemned as “one of the World’s Most Over-Rated Tourist Sites ……
“You can’t touch it, you can’t walk inside, you can’t wander about its space and you have to pay an entrance fee to see it. Located in a bleak spot, the henge has no sense of intimacy, and offers little shelter in bad weather. There is no museum that explores the significance of Stonehenge, and visitor facilities are also limited”…..
you might think we the public are entitled to a clue about how exactly this sad situation is to be rectified.
Well, we’ve had two opportunities: first, a travelling exhibition showing the proposals. Trouble is, our correspondent who attended reported back to us that it was “completely pointless…. it revealed nothing”.
Second, was the opportunity to read about it in the June Open Minutes of the English Heritage Advisory Committee.
Here it is in full:
“Item 10 – Stonehenge Environmental Improvements Project – Master Plan Design Presentation (EHAC 2009/24/E)10.1 This item is included in the exempt minutes of this meeting as it contains information potentially exempt from public access under the Freedom of Information Act; Section 36: prejudice to effective conduct of public affairs. Please note that other exemptions may also apply.
What, the Public can be told nothing at all? Is that possible? So it would seem.
And are we mistaken or is this exclusion part of a pattern???? You judge!
For many of us wandering on moors and hills we have our own private moments as we contemplate the stones, barrows and circles, they are tantalisingly unrevealing of their past history, so that we are forced to make some sort of response to them. For others it is the vast skyscape and the loneliness of the landscape that surrounds these enigmatic monuments that strikes a chord. We are reminded that death is part of the pattern for us all. The Edward Thomas passage below is a hymn to the beauty of the natural world and to a history that has wound itself round the stones in myths trying to capture the elusive truth of it all.
“On the barrows themselves, which are either isolated or in a group of two or three, grow thistle and gorse. They command mile upon mile of cliff and sea. In their sight the great headland run out to sea and sinking seem to rise again a few miles out in a sheer island, so that they resemble couchant beasts with backs under water but heads and haunches upreared….
…and near by the blue sea, slightly roughened as by a harrow, sleeps calm but foamy among cinder-covered isles; donkeys graze on the brown turf, larks rise and fall and curlews go by; a cuckoo sings amongst the deserted mines. But the barrows are most noble on the high heather and grass. The lonely turf is full of lilace scabious flowers and crimson knapweed among the solid mounds of gorse. The brown-green-grey of the dry summer grass reveals myriads of the flowers of the thyme, of stonecrop yellow and white, of pearly eyebright, of golden lady’s fingers, and the white or grey clover with its purest and earthest of all fragrances.
On every hand lies cromlech, camp, circle, hut and tumulus of the unwritten years. They are confused and and mingled with the natural litter of a barren land. It is a silent Bedlam of history, a senseless cemetery or museum, amidst which we walk as animals must do when they see those valleys full of skeletons where their kind are said to go punctually to die. There are enough of the dead; they outnumber the living, and there those trite truths burst with life and drum upon the typpanum with ambiguous fatal voices. At the end of this many barrowed moor, yet not in it, there is a solitary circle of grey stones, where the cry of the past is less vociferous, less bewildering, than on the moor itself, but more intense. Nineteen tall, grey stones stand round a taller, pointed one that is heavily bowed, amidst long grass and bracken and furze. A track passes close by, but does not enter the circle; the grass is unbent except by the weight of its bloom. It bears a name that connects it with the assembling and rivalry of the bards of Britain. Here, under the sky, they met, leaning upon the stones, tall fair men of peace, but half warriors, whose songs could change ploughshares into sword. Here they met, and the growth of the grass, the perfection of the stones (except that one stoops as with age), and the silence, suggest that since the last bard left it, in robe of blue or white or green – the colours of sky and cloud and grass upon this fair day – the circle has been unmolested, and the law obeyed which forbade any but a bard to enter it… And the inscription on the chair of the bards of Beisgawen was “nothing is that is not for ever and ever” – these things and the blue sky, the white, cloudy hall of the sun, and the green bough and grass, hallowed the ancient stones, and clearer than any vision of tall bards in the morning of the world was the tranquil delight of being thus ‘ teased out of time’ in the presence of this ancientness….
Taken from the South Country by Edward Thomas
The Stone circle of Beisgawen is in actual fact Boscawen -Un
Crossing boundaries: From our Far Eastern correspondent
Heritage Action has featured the question of votive offerings left at places like the Swallowhead Spring and West Kennet Long Barrow (Avebury) before
Offerings at the Swallowhead Spring. Image credit Moss
The leaving of ribbons, dolls, articles of clothing, crystals, t-lights, even food and drink, at such places is now generally frowned on and regarded by many as an unwelcome blot on the environment, or at the site of historic interest where they are left. There are, however, countries where the leaving of offerings in the form of ribbons, prayers written on paper which are then tied to the branches of trees or left at the base of stones, is commonplace and forms part of that country’s religion or cultural tradition. In Japan, massive ceremonial straw ropes (shimenawa) are often seen tied round the trunks of old or large trees and these form an intrinsic and deeply embedded aspect of the cultural makeup of the country. Often these trees are not on some secluded mountainside but are found in parks or city centres. Such is the reverence shown by the public towards the spirits that are thought to be, or to dwell within trees, rocks rivers and waterfalls, that it is not uncommon to see passers-by stop, put their hands together and bow respectfully to a tree or stone.
Sacred Japanese oak with shimenawa at the Imagumano Shinto Shrine, Kyoto
In modern Western societies there is a (perhaps) understandable reaction against the neo-pagan tradition of leaving offerings at springs and trees, but we should not look too unkindly on these practices as they seem to be tapping into a pre-Christian tradition and a deeply felt need to revere nature in its more ‘approachable’ manifestations such as trees, springs and stones. What is lacking in the West is a follow-up ceremony for such offerings. In other words there are few who bother to clean up after an offering has been left at a site. In Japan this problem does not generally arise because, when visiting the grave of a loved one for example, where it is not only customary to take along flowers and burn incense but also to take rice cakes, and perhaps a bottle of sake for the deceased, those offerings are not left behind but taken away after one’s respects to the deceased have been paid. In Japanese this concept is embodied in the wider concept known as kimochi dake itadakimasu. Roughly translated this means ‘I will take only the spirit of your kindness’ and is used for example when thanking (but politely refusing) an offer of help. In practice, no bottles of sake or parcels of rice cakes are left at the family grave; instead they are placed there for a short time while respects to the departed are paid and then they are packed up and taken home to be consumed by members of the deceased family. In other words, only the spirit of the offering is left behind.
The sentiments behind the nature-based Shinto practices of Japan, and the neo-pagan ceremonies of the West do seem to be broadly similar. What is different between the two cultures is the absence in the West of a ‘Rite of Disposal’ for offerings left at special or sacred places. In Japan there is a ceremony called Dondo Yaki. This is the annual and ritual burning of offerings left at sites throughout the year. To quote from the Let it Burn! blog -
“If you don’t burn the New Year’s decorations, it’s like holding on to the past. Moreover, holding on to the past is an act that doesn’t help you grow and mature as an individual. It’s a time to say good-bye to the old year and to any old, emotional attachments that might have held you back on a personal or professional level.”
Perhaps this is what the West needs for its ever-growing pagan tradition of leaving offerings at sacred sites - an annual burning celebration of the offerings, and worn out dreams, of one year and a clear statement heralding in the next.
Everybody must be aware, at this stage, of the calamitous crash of Ireland’s economy. While the whole world has wobbled, but stayed erect, this once golden state has fallen heavily and into a hole of its own excavation.
The much-praised ‘tiger’ economy and government funding-model would now seem to have been based, for the last number of years and largely, on constructing and swapping houses, for progressively greater amounts of cheap, borrowed money. New roads and motorways helped to bring new areas into the city hinterlands, areas that then ‘needed’ more houses, which then, obviously, needed more roads. People became, notionally, very wealthy, but only as long as a platform of confidence remained. Once interest rates rose and house prices dropped, this began to be pulled away.
According to the Irish Independent, more than 1800 archaeological sites were discovered and excavated, since 1993, as a result of this boom in motorway and road construction. Whatever your views on the morality of destruction of sites, for progress, or preservation only by record, this is a significant amount of knowledge that would not otherwise have been available at this point. Many astounding objects were unearthed, among them “one of the earliest images of man’s face on a ceramic bowl”, found while working on the N8, near Mitchelstown, Co. Cork. [His pronounced nose rather spoils a comparison to Gudea of Lagash (ruled 2144-2124 BCE).]
http://www.ucl.ac.uk/prehistoric/past/past54/past54.html#Anthropomorphic
Of course, this construction work is now mostly gone and the company archaeologists who did the excavations are also now staring into the national void. Due to the downturn, less than 60 sites will be investigated this year, compared to 210 last year and to a peak of over 500 in 2007.
Loss of livelihood, or a slowdown in learning, is never welcome news, but perhaps one point of reflection is in order. It’s an obvious thing to say, but excavation process and techniques of information retrieval are only as effective as they can be at the present time. A period of calm will mean that future, improved methods will have a chance to become available. Hopefully nothing vital has been lost in the Irish rush.
http://www.independent.ie/national-news/downturn-to–blame-for-lack-of-excavations-1867611.html
Reviewed by Alex Langstone
I recently received a review copy of a brand new book entitled The Spirit of Portland, by Dorset earth mysteries researcher Gary Biltcliffe. Gary has spent 30 years investigating earth mysteries, ancient civilisations and lost knowledge around the world, and for the last 10 years has spent time investigating the ancient secrets of the historic Isle of Portland. Portland forms the central part of the Jurassic Coast, a World Heritage Site on the Dorset and east Devon coastline.
For anyone interested in regional folklore and hidden history this book is very welcome. The author has thoroughly investigated the hidden side of Dorset’s Isle of Portland. Using long out of print and unpublished works by Clara King Warry, who wrote much about the folklore, mythology and archaeology of Portland during the first half of the 20th century, Gary has managed to piece together a forgotten history of the Isle. This paints a very different picture that most people may have of suburban Portland, which is justly famous for its fine quarried limestone and the proud maritime history of two world wars.
Above and below: are these weathered megaliths the remains of one of the many vanished stone circles on Portland?
Gary picks his way through the ancient megalithic sites, holy wells and geomantic landscapes of the area. This is particularly important as so many of Portland’s ancient archaeological sites have disappeared over the last couple of centuries due to the ever increasing encroachment of the limestone quarries. This is still affecting some sites, in particular the ancient and beautiful Culverwell holy well, a sacred healing well which has been in continual use for thousands of years. This well sits on the coast between Southwell and the Bill. Ancient stones line the well head, and a stream leads away towards the cliffs, where a waterfall crashes down to the sea.
Gary also discovers some of Portland’s ancient megaliths which are now incorporated into a stone wall. May they possibly be some of the ancient megaliths from the nearby site of the now vanished Saw Mill stone circle?
Above: the threatened Culverwell Holy Well at Portland, Dorset
Gradually the entire geomythic drama of the dramatic rocky peninsular is revealled through landscape geometry, ancient history, folklore and via some of the many old Portland families with their Masonic, occult and druidic secrets.
Links to ancient Phoenicia are discussed and the author makes many fabulous and intriguing discoveries including that of an unusual Semitic looking carved granite head which was dug up in a Portland garden. It was moved to the nearby museum after the garden owners found that locals were starting to bow in front it in a strange kind of Portlander ritual veneration!
Other legends are discussed including the giants of the island, and at the end of the book the author presents 5 sacred sites walking tours of the area which take in all of the sites discussed in the book.
The Spirit of Portland is a lavish production with many colour photographs, diagrams and maps. Though some may call to question some of the more outlandish claims made by the author, I for one can recommend this work as an important addition to achieving a better understanding of Britain’s ancient history, sacred sites and folklore.
The Spirit of Portland. 192 pages, with 90 colour plates. Published by Roving Press, 2009. Frampton, Dorset. www.rovingpress.co.uk. Available from the publishers priced at £9.95. See the publisher’s website for more details - http://www.rovingpress.co.uk/Spirit_of_Portland.htm
See also the author’s website here: http://www.belinusline.com
All photographs by Gary Biltcliffe, used with kind permission.
This review was first published on the Spirit of Albion website.
Press Release from Susan McKeown;
The second Feis Teamhra: A Turn at Tara, which features performances by internationally-recognized Irish poets and musicians, will be held between 3 and 5 o’clock on August 30 2009 on the Hill of Tara. Those taking part are Michael Longley, Paul Muldoon, Susan McKeown, Laoise Kelly, and Aidan Brennan.
While the Hill of Tara has become something of a contested spot, symbolizing for some less the sacred site where ancient Ireland crowned its kings than the desecrated site where modern Ireland gave in to crass consumerism and, as it were, drowned in things, the note the organizers hope to strike is not one of confrontation but celebration. It’s a celebration of the continuity of the linked traditions of Irish poetry and music, traditions that have almost certainly flourished here since at least 2000 BC.
Following an appearance last year by Seamus Heaney, the headlining poet this year is Michael Longley, the esteemed Belfast-based author who has always taken a particular interest not only in the flora and fauna of Ireland but its folklore and mythology. While he studied Classics at TCD, Michael Longley is capable of writing as movingly about Medbh and the Grey of Macha as about Menelaus and Mycenae. Among his many awards are the Whitbread Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, The Irish Times Literature Prize for Poetry, the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry and the T.S. Eliot Prize. The author of 8 full-length collections, his Collected Poems was published by Jonathan Cape in 2006.
Also reading poetry will be Paul Muldoon, the Armagh-born, US-based, winner of the 2003 Pulitzer Prize. While he has been vocal in the Campaign to Save Tara, Paul Muldoon will confine himself on this occasion to reading from some of his 10 full-length collections of poems.
The musical component of Feis Teamhra: A Turn at Tara is headlined by Susan McKeown, the Dublin-born, US-based, Grammy-winning singer-songwriter who has released more than 10 CDs. The passion and precision of her singing have led her to work with, among others, Natalie Merchant, Linda Thompson, Pete Seeger, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Billy Bragg, Arlo Guthrie, Andy Irvine, Flook, Lunasa, Johnny Cunningham, and the Klezmatics.
The other musicians featured this year at Feis Teamhra are Aidan Brennan and Laoise Kelly. Aidan Brennan is a virtuoso guitarist who has worked not only with Susan McKeown (Sweet Liberty, 2004), but Kevin Burke (Kevin Burke in Concert, 1999) and Loreena McKennitt (Book of Secrets, 1997, and Midwinter Night’s Dream, 2008.) Born in Dublin, Aidan Brennan now lives in County Laois. Laoise Kelly, generally considered to be the foremost Irish harper, was born in Mayo and lives there still. The Irish Times has described her as “a young harpist with the disposition of an iconoclast and the talent and technique of a virtuoso.” In addition to her own CD (Just Harp, 2000), Laoise Kelly has worked with Sharon Shannon, The Chieftains, Natalie MacMaster, Sinead O’Connor, Kate Bush and Bill Whelan.
Crossing boundaries: From our Far Eastern correspondent
A Tarim Basin mummy photographed by Aurel Stein circa 1910
Mummies, possibly of ‘Celtic’ origin and some 3,000 years old, have been unearthed in the Tarim Basin of western China for nearly 100 years. ‘Cherchen Man’ is just one of these but one of the most interesting. Cherchen Man is tall, red haired and wears a red tunic and tartan leggings. His mummified body, along with others, are now kept in Urumqi City Museum in Xinjiang province. Perhaps even more interesting are the burial sites where Cherchen Man and his people are found – these bear signs of a Celtic influence and include standing stones similar to British dolmens as well as icons reminiscent of sheela-na-gigs. More here
See also - Mallory, J. P.; Victor H. Mair (2000). The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West. London: Thames & Hudson. ISBN 0500051011.
A report by Graham Orriss.
Well, that was yet another successful and enjoyable Megameet!
Despite the greyness and drizzle, a fair few of you turned out at the Red Lion in Avebury for our annual get-together.
It was a great day – so good to catch up with a few old friends, and fantastic to meet a few new ones! It’s always a pleasure to see the looks on the faces of people who are seeing Avebury for the first time…
A musical interlude at the 2009 Megameet in The Red Lion at Avebury.
We brought a friend along who has just become interested in standing stones, and arrived at Avebury via The Avenue. I think it’s safe to say there was an awed silence, as he saw stone after stone appear out of the window… He absolutely loved the place, and can’t wait to get back! He was made extremely welcome by all who were there, as was my other friend, who is a frequent visitor to Avebury but had never attended a Megameet previously.
It was so nice to see people of all ages – from toddler to pensioner (sorry folks!) – all chattering excitedly about new finds, other sites and other friends that couldn’t make it but sent their best wishes.
I honestly believe that not one person who was there for the Megameet went away disappointed. It’s always a shame to not be able to spend more time with everyone, but there is always next time… Everybody who attended, without exception, was an absolute delight to chat and spend time with.
The overwhelming outcome was that we should do it all again sooner rather than later, so we’re hoping to have another one before the year’s out, and maybe organise two Megameets for 2010!
See you then!
by Gordon Kingston, Heritage Action
I’ve just finished reading the latest news, on the unholy mess that is the M3. Just when you thought that the story couldn’t get any more farcical, something else pops up.
At least the good citizens of Meath can sleep safe in their homes. The road that they were apparently clamouring for, because they were sold those over-priced, over-zoned, under-serviced ‘country houses’ that, yes, you have to drive from, will definitely make a profit for Eurolink. It has been revealed that, if the number of road users falls below a ‘minimum traffic level’, then the taxpayer will have to step in and make good the difference.
Who, tell me, signed off on that one? Couldn’t they even flog a chunk of our national heritage, for scrap, without ending up paying someone to take it? The first time such a guarantee has been made and again, yes, you can also guarantee that someone is laughing all the way to what was once a bank.
You’d have to ask, at this stage, if anyone is actually going to use the cursed thing? That’s the situation that they seem to be contemplating. The high tolls and a new rail link, from Navan to the city, are going to bleed traffic away from the motorway. In fact, you’d be wondering why they built it at all. Except, of course, to keep the good citizens and voters, of Meath, safe in their ’goldmines’, singing the right tune come election time and the boys with big pockets and the land in the right places providing the chorus.
I know, I know. The damage is done anyway. There’s just something in me, maybe genetic, that thinks that if you stomp down the path killing every insect that happens to stray under your feet, you should, at a ‘minimum level‘, make sure that you’re going somewhere. At least let there be a point to it. It was never right, but this just makes it insane. What a waste.
by Gordon Kingston, Heritage Action.
Bachwen, Gwynedd.
During a recent holiday, in North Wales, I took myself away from the family for a couple of hours and visited the portal dolmen, called Bachwen, in Clynnog. While there, I noticed a pale-pink and badly crushed carcass of a crab, that something, a gull perhaps, had placed on the capstone. Then, alive and below the stone, stuck to a loose wisp of sheep’s wool and the sea-green lichen of the door, was a snail. The two creatures, or the state symbolised by each, seemed to be in juxtaposition, a reversal of the expected placement at a tomb; life now inside and death out.
A human perspective, of course. Our own lives would seem interminable, immortal even, godlike, to such as these and non-human life very much carries on, even in the grave. As does our use of symbols to represent our expectations and fears, our adjustments to the fact of our own mortality.
Some of the earliest, solid attempts at such representation, or consideration, perhaps re-creation, of the forces of existence, may still be with us, in the form of these Early Neolithic structures. As William O’Brien (2002, 160) suggests, while discussing a different, yet similarly homogenous set of Irish monuments and their effect on the later mythological landscape; “ Clearly, these stone monuments are inherently symbolic and so should reflect in some fundamental way the central beliefs of the religious practice concerned. These beliefs are materialised in the architecture and orientation of these monuments, and in their use-history. While the design of these monuments has functional possibilities (to receive offerings, to hold burials, to congregate people), the consistency of its execution over a wide geographical area suggests a deeper religious significance.”
Or, if you can imagine the words of Mircea Eliade (1958, 216) to apply to the complete dolmen, rather than a single stone; “ A rock or a pebble would be the object of reverent devotion because it represented or imitated something, because it came from somewhere. Its sacred value is always due to that something or somewhere, never to its own actual existence… Their role was generally more magical than religious. Invested with certain sacred powers as a result of their origin or their shape, they were not adored, but made use of.”
The landscape setting and structural features, of this particular class of monument, have recently been investigated by Tatjana Kytmannow, who discovered the majority to be aligned along a valley, parallel or reverse-parallel to a small stream, facing either its source, a confluence or, occasionally, a pronounced bend; “… the presence of a small stream, nearly always parallel to the tomb, and the avoidance of the highest point in the vicinity in 100% of the cases, are strong indications that the precise siting was an integral part of the belief system. Slope direction and tomb orientation are preferably east, the location is in most cases in a sheltered valley and high altitudes are avoided .” (2008, 189)
The dolmen would have been surrounded, but not covered, by a cairn and the fully exposed capstone raised to slope from front to rear, either by being wedge-shaped, as here at Clynnog, or by having a lower back stone than portals, or door stone.
It has been suggested (Richards 2004, 76; Scarre 2007, 73) that the purpose of these monuments may not have been, as O’Brien also allows, in a different context above, to serve functionally after their completion, as a sepulchre for example, but instead to rest in the act of building and “raising a mythical or sacred stone from the earth into the air.” Alasdair Whittle (2004, 86) extends this argument to contend that the raising of the stones “may have had a more general metaphorical or mythical significance”, allowing their visual similarity, in several cases, to the slope of nearby mountains, but also proposing, as Eliade hints at above, that “they could be seen as a version of creation, in which the earth was raised to the sky, or an account of how sky and earth were once joined.”
Allowing Colin Richards’s contention that the stone itself was sacred and its raising was the purpose of the monument, you would have to wonder why so many sacred stones were wedge-shaped or, failing that, had to be tilted to the rear to give the same impression. Whittle’s idea does seem to fit more comfortably. He implies that the stone was sacred as a symbol, rather than in itself, but then he also comes up against the difficulty of the tilt. Imitable mountain sides are not present in the vicinity of all portal tombs and an earth raised to the sky should not always lean, lopsided, unless a very specific cosmology demanded it . Mythology, as Whittle himself reasons and ragged cloth that it is, may be one possible way to provide an answer.
Browne's Hill, Co. Carlow, facing the portals and door stone.
“…it is the man who is terrorized by his sense of personal weakness who becomes concerned with divinity …the artist among primitive peoples was anything but a commentator. He was a maker of gods that had animate life, that had intrinsic meaning.” (Newman 1990, 93)
Terror due to powerlessness in the face of the inevitable, the triple absolutes of death, nature and the elements. This is what would have been universal, but what of the symbols to shape it?
Common to many ancient world-views was a preoccupation with the sacred mountain, a link, or prop, which holds up the sky, or marks the entrance to the world of the dead. If anything, then this may be the key to the symbolism of the capstone. Not the earth raised to the sky, but a symbol of the sky, only held by the tips of mountains from crushing back into the earth. Particularly evident in tripartite views of the world, that is, the division into heaven, earth and the underworld, hints of this conception come even earlier, in the likes of Kur, for example, in Neolithic Sumer. This abode of the dead, whose name signifies both ’mountain’ and ’foreign land’, was to be found “at the foot of a distant mountain in the highland beyond the northeastern borders of Sumer.” (Johnston ed., 2004, 478)
Even closer counterparts to the two portals, if they are to be considered representations of supporting mountains, were to be found in the Late Bronze Age of Ugarit (Syria-Canaan), where the underworld; ‘ars (earth), ruled by the god Mot, was located “beneath two mountains at the edge of earth”. Like the Jewish Sheol and here emphasising the tripartite structure at a single, mythical location, Mot was referred to in terms of insatiable consumption of life and flesh, having “one lip to earth, one lip to heaven… a tongue to the stars!” (Johnston ed. 2004, 479)
In Mesopotamian legend, Gilgamesh wanders then to the end of the earth, to two such mountains, after the death of Enkidu and his fright at the realisation of his own mortality (The Epic of Gilgamesh, Tablet IX (George trans., 1999, 71)):
“To Mashu’s twin mountains he came,
Which daily guard the rising [sun,]
Whose tops [support] the fabric of heaven,
Whose base reaches down to the Netherworld.
There were scorpion-men guarding its gate,
Whose terror was dread, whose glance was death,
Whose radiance was fearful, overwhelming the mountains -
At sunrise and sunset they guarded the sun.”
The early Greeks thought that the heavens were a disc, also supported and in perpetuity, by the condemned Titan, Atlas (Collins, 2004, 63). Or, in the words of Herodotus (Book 4, 184 (Waterfield trans. 1998, 297)); the “narrow round mountain called Mount Atlas …is said to be so tall that clouds hide its peaks from sight throughout the year, winter and summer. The local inhabitants (who are called Atlantes after the mountain) say that it is a pillar supporting the sky.”
The Egyptians regarded the sky as either a bird, a cow, a flat plane, supported by pillars, or the goddess Nut balanced, like the dolmen here at Clynnog, with its four relatively equal supports, on her feet and hands. (Collins, 2004, 62)
Even as in Norse creation mythology, as Ellis Davidson (1964, 27) relates; “From Ymir’s skull they made the dome of the sky, placing a dwarf to support it at each of the four corners and to hold it high above the earth.”
This is the point where the ragged cloth is stretched out. To accept these commonalities as conceptions also, in the British Isles of the Early Neolithic, would be to see our dolmen as possible representation of cosmos. To subsequently apply Richards’ contention, that the greater purpose lay in the construction rather than the use of a completed structure, would be to conclude that each such building process would have involved a repeat of the mythological creation.
The greater the sizes of the capstones, the closer re-creation would have been to the actual scale of creation, up to a size at which they would have become impossible to lift fully from the ground. Heaven and Earth separated and held apart, in awe, from unity. The mountains, as supports, touching and forming a bridge between each.
Browne's Hill, Co. Carlow, from the side.
Kilmogue, Co. Kilkenny.
“It’s not the mission of art to copy nature, but to express it!” (de Balzac, Howard trans. 2001, 13)
Perhaps, at this point, it would be advisable to return to the other universal features enumerated by Kytmannow; the siting beside a stream, facing a source, or confluence and the avoidance of the highest ground in the locality. The features that she felt to be an indication “that the precise siting was an integral part of the belief system.” Water is an essential part of our existence, but the avoidance of the vicinity of larger rivers, for siting of dolmens, would seem to suggest that something more was intended, something that necessitated a position close to the origin of the flow or, failing that, a site where two flows met, but not where the structure could be seen from every side.
Apparent, in the mythologies related in the previous section, was the concept of distance from the mountain, or underworld. The Kur, of Sumer, was beyond its borders. The ‘ars of Ugarit and Gilgamesh’s Mashu were at the edge of the earth. If the distance was not horizontal, as, sometimes, in the case of the nether-world, then it was vertical, deep underground. Such a separation, from the world of the living, would have been physically traversable only by a mythical hero, a journey to be re-made in a trance, or a distance to be symbolised, perhaps, with the geography to hand.
The evidence is incomplete as yet but, if, as Kytmannow (2008, 186) surmises, the lack of nearby settlement traces indicate that “the preferred place for settlement is not necessarily identical with the preferred space for the erection of portal tombs”, then it could reasonably be contended that any approach, a journey, may also have been made from the other side of the higher ground. Thus, separation and great distance from the living world could also have been emphasised, depending on the route taken, by keeping the dolmen out of sight until the last moments before arrival.
The underground location of the dead was also the location of the water. A documented example of a symbolic centre, or re-creation, is the Mesopotamian temple, each one containing representations of the underground, freshwater ocean, the Apsu, and the primordial mountain that rose from it, the Duku. (Johnston ed. 2004, 253) This underground ocean also appears, almost inevitably, in the mythologies of Northern Europe.
Beneath the World Tree, in Norse mythology, was the spring of Mimir, of wisdom and understanding, the source of all the world’s rivers and the Well of Urd, the spring of fate. In Irish legend the other-world (Tir Tairngire) contained the Well of Segais, also the source of streams, wisdom and occult knowledge. (Ellis Davidson 1964, 26; Smyth 1996, 147) Then, further east, the Hittites believed that “the bank of a river, the site of the creation of humans in primeval times, was an ideal location for communication with chthonic forces …(and)… those places where watercourses disappeared underground into the limestone landscape of central Anatolia were thought to be entrances to the underworld and were therefore sacred.” (Johnston ed. 2004, 264)
In the Odyssey, Book 11 (Rieu trans. 1991, 156), Circe sends Odysseus to sail with the North Wind, across the River of Ocean to find the distant Halls of Hades, the Greek underworld, where “..,at a rocky pinnacle, the River of Flaming Fire and the River of Lamentation, which is a branch of the Waters of Styx, meet and pour their thundering streams into Acheron.” A great distance travelled to arrive beneath a pinnacle, at a confluence of streams that mark the entrance to the world of the dead.
Pentre Ifan, Pembrokeshire.
Bachwen, Gwynedd, from the north.
This, then, would be the site for our dolmen of possibility, a place where the stream, through emergence, confluence, or radical change in direction already provided an entrance to the underworld, a world from where it and all other streams issued. This would be a site already sacred, where the dead could be consulted, a place where no one lived, a natural position to begin to separate the other parts of the cosmos.
The capstone, as sky, would be raised high on the points of uprights, as mountains, rising from a rocky cairn, or plateau. Their arrangement, varying slightly, depending on the local version of the cosmology, as in the Near East, would leave a chamber inside, with entrance or exit barred, as Gilgamesh found, by a gate stone. Viewed from the front of the dolmen, the blue sky would seem to rise upwards, from behind and above, to meet the stone sky at the point where the mountains supported it. Then this portion would, in turn, gradually slope downwards, like the curve of the firmament, until it reached the other horizon to the west. The abode of the setting sun.
Perhaps…
Dolmen of Possibility
Collins, J.J. 2004 Cosmology: Time and History. In Johnston, S.I. (ed.) Religions of the Ancient World, 59-70. Belknap Press: Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-01517-7
de Balzac, H. The Unknown Masterpiece, (trans.) Howard, R. 2001. New York Review of Books ISBN 0-940322-74-9
Eliade, M. 1958 Patterns in Comparitive Religion, (trans.) Sheed, R. 1996. Bison Books ISBN 0-8032-6733-9
Ellis Davidson, H.R. 1964 Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. Pelican: Penguin
The Epic of Gilgamesh, (trans.) George, A. 1999. Penguin Classics ISBN 0-140-44919-1
Herodotus. The Histories, (trans.) Waterfield, W. 1998. Oxford University Press ISBN 0-19-953566-8
Homer. The Odyssey, (trans.) Rieu, E.V. 1946 (revised 1991). Penguin Classics ISBN 0-14-044556-0
Johnston, S.I. (ed.) 2004 Religions of the Ancient World. Belknap Press: Harvard University Press ISBN 0-674-01517-7
Kytmannow, T. 2008 Portal tombs in the Landscape. The Chronology, Morphology and Landscape Setting of the Portal Tombs of Ireland, Wales and Cornwall. BAR British Series 455 ISBN 1-4073-0251-5
Newman, B. 1990 Selected Writings and Interviews, (ed.) O’Neill, J.P. University of California Press ISBN 0-520-07817-9
O’ Brien, W. 2002 Megaliths in a mythologised landscape: south-west Ireland in the Iron Age. In Scarre, C. (ed.) Monuments and Landscape in Atlantic Europe, 152-176. Routledge ISBN 0-415-27134-5
Richards, C. 2004 Labouring with monuments: constructing the dolmen at Carreg Samson, south-west Wales. In Cummings, V. & Fowler, C. (eds.) The Neolithic of the Irish Sea. Materiality and traditions of practice, 72-80. Oxbow Books ISBN 1-84217-109-7
Scarre, C. 2007 The Megalithic Monuments of Britain and Ireland. Thames & Hudson ISBN 0-500-28666-1
Smyth, D. 1996 A Guide to Irish Mythology. Irish Academic Press ISBN 0-7165-2612-4
Whittle, A. 2004 Stones that float to the sky: portal dolmens and their landscapes of memory and myth. In Cummings, V. & Fowler, C. (eds.) The Neolithic of the Irish Sea. Materiality and traditions of practice, 81-90. Oxbow Books ISBN 1-84217-109-7
An exciting excavation, that has been going on since 2003 in Orkney, on a site situated between the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Stenness, has revealed a large building that is being called a ‘Neolithic Temple’. Walls are still standing up to three feet high in this cruciform building. More information can be read here
Details of the excavation, are kept in diary form which can be found on the Orkneyjar website; click on dates to see photographs of this incredible site dated to 5000 bc years ago.
The Great Wall of Brodgar, as its been dubbed, appears to go right across the peninsula and seems to separate the land of the living from the realm of the spirits at the Ring of Brodgar.
Crossing boundaries: From our Far Eastern correspondent
Ceiling decoration from a cave at Tun Huang. Tang Dynasty (618-907)
What is it in the human psyche that permits it to wipe away the achievements of past generations and other cultures so easily? Three examples of the destruction of our heritage are found in the title above, but there are literally countless more.
The Bonds Garage housing development (just a stone’s throw from the bank and ditch that form part of the north-east quadrant at Avebury) and the bulldozing of the ancient Silk Road city of Kashgar in north-west China (see here) have one thing in common, they are being done in the name of ‘improvement’.
It is true that residents of the mobile homes behind the Bonds Garage development at Avebury, and the people of Kashgar in north-west China, will probably benefit from better housing but at what cost to world heritage? Like an extinct species, old Kashgar has now been lost. New houses at the Bonds site will, if they are allowed to go ahead, be an eyesore and an intrusion to the northern approach at Avebury for decades to come – an intrusion until a wiser generation seeks their removal. The sad side of all of this is that such destruction really is not necessary. The old does not need to make way for the new. With careful planning, and creative insight, preservation and progress can be achieved and both can support and nourish the other.
We asked at the beginning of this feature what is it in the human psyche that permits it to wipe away the achievements of past generations and other cultures so easily? While some understanding (though not the condoning) of the destruction of our heritage in the name of progress might be admitted, the culturecide of objects like the great standing Buddhas at Bamiyan in the name of religion is utterly and totally beyond our understanding. Perhaps those responsible for this destruction would care to give reasons for their actions on these pages.
Archaeologist Francis Pryor hears what the land around mainland Britain was like before it was submerged at the end of the last Ice Age.
A repeat of this evocative programme on what lies beneath the sea round Britain – old river courses, valleys and hills and of course mesolithic artifacts, with maybe circles, burial tombs and prehistoric walls still lurking beneath the waves.
“The continued destruction of prehistoric monuments is a fact which I am sure we all deeply regret, and which reflects little credit on us as a nation. This year a portion of “Abury”, the grandest monument of its kind in this country (perhaps in the world), was actually sold for building purposes in cottage allotments.”
Sir John Lubbock speaking to the Anthropological Institute on 15th of January 1872.
Sir John was of course our greatest prehistorian and introduced the Ancient Monuments Act which set up a system of scheduling and state guardianship which has prevailed to the present day and has been replicated worldwide.
Recently the current statutory guardians of Avebury, English Heritage, expressed their opposition to the development of the site of the adjacent Bonds Garage for housing yet then failed to exercise their available powers towards it, thus allowing building to go ahead – which it will shortly – thus blighting the northern approach to Sir John’s “grandest monument of its kind in this country (perhaps in the world)” forever.
Thus, Sir John’s original concept has been ignored by the very system and officialdom that he founded and a level of protection fashioned in the late nineteenth century has been flouted in the early twenty first. As our previous article implied perhaps more respect is needed for Avebury. No amount of self-important words will protect it, evidently.
This is a rant about the way Avebury and its ancient stones set within the landscape of the downs is slipping into a sad shadow of its former self. There is a point when enough is enough, and the ‘disneyfication’ of a World Heritage Site stopped.
Let me first introduce you to the mysterious manifestations that appear overnight in the great wheat fields on the downs. Unknown creatures descend at night, wander round in the dark and produce ‘miraculous’ circular patterns called crop circles to the fury of the local farmers. There is unfortunately a certain gullible element in the human race, that would like to believe it is the hand of aliens that has been at work here, so this phenomena is of world wide interest.
Take half-an hour of a Sunday afternoon, and let’s see what happens. Here comes a bus load of ‘foreign’ people, who wander across the Avenue, find the wire fencing is difficult to get over, so spend ten minutes divesting themselves of their coats which are then laid on fencing and everyone hauls themselves over to go and look at the mysterious circle, – back to the bus and on to the next. Imagine this being repeated at all the circles (there are quite a few) on the downs.
Wow – up roars four landrovers, one safari painted (we’re in deepest, darkest, wild Wessex here) and our occupants hell bent on crop circle viewing trog up Waden Hill to once again climb over fences to view this particular circle. Their landrovers on closer inspection are covered in mud, it drips slowly onto the road, and as the only track round here is the Ridgeway we can assume that they have been ‘off roading’ along this ancient trackway reducing it to a muddy rutted mire – bless em.
Planes buzz overhead, the magnetic pull of Avebury’s magical hold spreads far into the landscape, children chase the poor sheep round the stones, young men scale the heights of the stones and lousy coffee is served up in the National Trust cafe.
Heaven preserve us the world is going mad at Avebury, but at least the Pagans bring one thing that everyone else has forgotten about and that is respect – perhaps there is a lesson to be learnt here!
Moss:
Anthony Murphy, author of ‘Island of the Setting Sun’ and creator/curator of the ‘Mythical Ireland’ website, has recently revealed aerial photographs of work in progress, on a number of ‘new’ monuments in the countryside of County Meath. According to the website, the images, taken in 2006, show probable large scale copies of, amongst others, a passage tomb, a passage cairn and a rath.
http://www.mythicalireland.com/ancientsites/mystery-monuments/mystery-monuments-Ireland.php
As long as nothing was harmed in the process and proper planning procedure was followed, it’s the landowners’ own business what they put on their land, but it just seems a bit sad, in the context of where we are now with our ancient heritage. Destruction close by at Tara, for example, commercialisation of the Boyne monuments, deterioration and neglect at Bremore. Although there may be a very worthy reason for its construction, I just can’t see the need to celebrate the fake while the real is ailing all around it.
I’d been trying to think of an apt analogy for this place and rejected the ‘Stepford Wives’. That would, of course, imply a conspiracy. Madame Tussaud’s might be closer; all those waxworks of things that live, or once lived. If anyone has any information about it please leave a comment here, or on the ‘Mythical Ireland’ website.
Skara Brae
Work to strengthen the foundations of the sea wall near the famous Neolithic village of Skara Brae in Orkney is under way.
Coastal erosion is an ongoing situation around the coastline of Britain, Scotland in particular suffers from the wild pounding of the waves, and the present climate change is of course hastening this process.
There is nothing to be done against the forces of nature, recording the archaeological sites on our shorelines that are fast disappearing into the sea is perhaps the only way forward. Skara Brae is protected by a sea wall four metres deep, but even so the sea is but a few metres from this wall. The latest effort by Historic Scotland to protect this site is reinforcing a section of the wall that has been undermined by the waves.
Scape is a trust set up to promote research and conservation of Scotland’s coastline and has undertaken several projects in this direction
For further reading on the subject of coastal erosion Julie Gibson and Frank Bradford’s book – Rising Tide; The Loss of Coastal Heritage in Orkney can be found here.
Skara Brae was made a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1999 and these words taken from Wikipedia sums up the great need to save or conserve this site.
Historic Scotland – Statement of Significance;
The monuments at the heart of Neolithic Orkney and Skara Brae proclaim the triumphs of the human spirit in early ages and isolated places. They were approximately contemporary with the mastabas of the archaic period of Egypt (first and second dynasties), the brick temples of Sumeria, and the first cities of the Harappa culture in India, and a century or two earlier than the Golden Age of China. Unusually fine for their early date, and with a remarkablely rich survival of evidence, these sites stand as a visible symbol of the achievements of early people away from the traditional centres of civilisation.
Further news item 9th August 2009
The Gathering Night by Margaret Elphinstone
ISBN 9781847672889
“The Gathering Night, set among the hunter-gatherers of Mesolithic Scotland, is a story of conflict, loss, love, adventure and devastating natural disaster. This pre-historical novel is set deep in our stone-age past, but resonates as a parable of our troubled planet 8000 years on.”
More here - http://www.margaretelphinstone.co.uk/
“Nature” would not be graced with a separate word in Mesolithic culture, with the trials and tribulations of these humans co-existing in the same holistic world with animals, rivers, mountains; inextricably linked, not separate. It is Elphinstone’s formidable depiction of nature which is the greatest strength of this atmospheric novel. Nature is depicted as both cruel and benign, from the harsh and biting winter in forbidding terrain where the family pull lily-roots from the freezing mud, to a time of plenitude, when birds flutter throughout the land.
“Water and islands are at the heart of her work and here a river runs throughout the narrative; Elphinstone is in her element in depicting the sea flooding into estuaries, white gulls wheeling overhead. Here the river is a metaphor for storytelling, and this indeed is a novel which flows at its own pace, with many voices trickling into its main current. The powers and pitfalls of storytelling are explored and also exemplified; the voices of the multiple narrators oscillate so rapidly that it is difficult to build up fully-developed, three-dimensional characters.”
More here -
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-gathering-night-by-margaret-elphinstone-1696219.html
More here -
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/reviews/the-gathering-night-by-margaret-elphinstone-1696219.html
By Gordon Kingston, Heritage Action
Road works on the A4, in Northern Ireland, seem to have uncovered yet another ‘Stonehenge’. The circular, timber structure, found in Armaghlughey, near Ballygawley, has been roughly dated to the years around 3000 bce and has contents that are said “to bear a strong resemblance to Stonehenge and the Giant’s Ring near Belfast.” Excavation was by the Headland Group, whose report is due to be submitted next spring (2010) and work apparently “proceeded without damaging historical sites and artefacts”. That would be wonderful, if it’s the case.
Just one pedantic quibble, however and that with the frequent use of ‘Stonehenge‘, as a name for any newly discovered prehistoric circle. There is a point, like the ‘new Bob Dylan’, or the amount of scandals that get the word ‘gate‘ tacked on their end, or persistent media hyping of each global scare up to the swine flu, at which it will become counter-productive, both for consideration of the original and for each ‘new’ monument. The ‘oh yeah, whatever’ point. While famous comparisons are undoubtedly useful for protecting, or publicising a discovery, each site is ultimately distinctive, if not unique. Even a different comparison would be welcome, for some occasional variation.
Perhaps our sensation-drunk age is merely getting, not the Stonehenge it deserves, but the amount of diluted Stonehenges it deserves.
http://www.tyronetimes.co.uk/2617/Tyrone-has-a-Stonehenge-of.5499399.jp
Not exactly megalithic news but it just so happens that this festival in the Mendips which attracts thousands of people has been cancelled just before it was about to open today. Judge for yourselves the motivations behind the ‘crackdown’ or ‘political decision’ that has been made, and ask what has happened in our country when green festivals are closed down for security reasons!
Police today set up road blocks around a music festival site to keep thousands of environmental campaigners away from one of Britain’s longest-running festivals.
Up to 15,000 people had begun to gather for the Big Green Gathering in the Mendip hills, Somerset, which was officially due to start on Wednesday. But organisers were forced to cancel it on legal advice yesterday after the police took out an injunction to prevent the festival going ahead.
And yes the Guardian have put a correction in today to their article, but are we not yet seeing another G20 Protest ‘State’ tactic being employed against innocent people.
The following correction was added to this online article on 28 July 2009:
Police say that no injunction was served on the Big Green Gathering. Mendip council’s application for an injunction was due to be heard in the high court, but because the organisers of the festival had surrendered their licence before this hearing, our article is not correct to say the police served an injunction. The article also mentions the organisers’ need for a road closure order from the Highways Agency; in fact, this was a matter for the local highways authority.
Update; 5th August 2009; George Monbiot in the Guardian – The Busybody-state
