Ireland: Submissions for World Heritage Status on sites

World Heritage Status sought for sites.

The historic city of Dublin
The Céide Fields and North West Mayo Boglands
Western Stone Forts
The Monastic City of Clonmacnoise and its cultural landscape
Early Medieval Monastic Sites
The Royal Sites of Ireland: Cashel, Dún Ailinne, Hill of Uisneach, Rathcroghan Complex and Tara Complex

It will be noted that the Tara Complex under the heading of Royal Sites of Ireland has managed to make it into the submissions to UNESCO’s World Heritage sites, though of course the damage already done by the motorway under the Hill of Tara, damaging Rath Lugh and destroying the Lismullin Henge recently, does not seem to have been mentioned in the following quotation;  “erosion, agricultural and quarrying activity”, they still had “all the elements necessary to express the outstanding universal value of the royal sites” to give a “complete representation of the features and processes conveying their significance”.  Hmmm – roads are ominously missing from that statement!

Still the Céide Fields and North West Mayo Boglands are also on the list,  “The Céide Fields are included as “the outstanding example of human settlement, land-use and interaction with environment in Neolithic times”, which we should  be grateful for. The following link gives a full account of the submissions.

Article in Irish Times by Frank McDonald.

Boundless and bare

The High Bridestones, North Yorkshire. Image credit Littlestone

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown
And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!’
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

P B Shelley (1792-1822)
 
With thanks to fitzcoraldo on The Modern Antiquarian  for the above combination of site and poem.
More poems on the megalithic theme here – http://megalithicpoems.blogspot.com/