May 18 - Brú na Bóinne

Collon and the other towns in this area are in the Boyne Valley.  This is a very historically important river valley about 50 miles north of Dublin and one of the reasons it is so important is the site we will be visiting today.

Today we visited Brú na Bóinne.  For those who don't understand Gaelic it translates as "Palace of the Boyne."  It is a World Heritage location just a few miles south of Collon that consists of three neolithic sites:  Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth.  Today we will be visiting Newgrange and Knowth.  These are what is known as passage tombs that were built about 5,000 years ago, so they are older then the Egyptian pyramids and Stonehenge. Here is a photo of the entrance to the visitors center where you catch shuttle buses that take you to the various site.

At this point we are on the south side of the Boyne River and the sites are on the north side so we first have to cross a footbridge over the Boyne.

Here is a view of the river.  As rivers go it is not it is not very big but a lot of Irish history is centered on the Boyne.

Once we get across the river we take a shuttle bus up to Newgrange.  Newgrange is the best known of these tombs and dates to around 3,200 BC.  The large mound is approximately 260 feet in diameter and is surrounded at its base by a ring of 97 stones. Here is a photo I took of Newgrange as were were approaching it.

It is big.  It consists of a rock base, tomb enclosure and passageway to enter the tomb.  Here is an artist's concept of what it would have looked like as they began the construction.

 Once the base was finished they piled some 220,000 tons of rock and dirt on top to complete the mound.  Some of the base stones are estimated to weigh over 20 tons and this was done in the time before horses or wheeled vehicles.  The stones used in its construction were not local and some came from the Wicklow mountains south of Dublin.  They're not sure how they got the stones to the site, but it must have been a major undertaking that took generations to complete.

The most impressive of these stones is the highly decorated Entrance Stone which you can see here.  No one knows what the patterns on the stone are supposed to mean.

 

 Other stones around the base of the mound are also decorated in different styles as in this example.

Above the entrance is an opening that serves a most important ceremonial function  The entrance and the passage are aligned so that exactly at sunrise on the day of winter solstice, the sunlight enters through this opening an illuminates the central chamber.

As can be seen in this photo which I would like to take credit for but we visited at the wrong time of the year.

We were able to enter the tomb and walk to the central chamber.  People back then must have been a lot smaller as it was a tight fit and one guy in our group had to give up as he could not make it to the center.  The central chamber has three recesses for burials.  A corbelled roof covers the chamber.  To construct the roof, the builders overlapped layers of large rocks until the roof could be sealed with a capstone 20 feet above the floor.  After 5,000 years the roof at Newgrange is still waterproof.   Here is a photo of the roof that I was able to download.  No photos were allowed inside.

We next took the shuttle bus to Knowth.  This site consists of a single large mound that is bigger than Newgrange and a number of smaller ones scattered around the hill top.  The main mound is 312 feet in diameter and the cap is estimated to weigh 275,000 tons.  Knowth has two passages, one on the east and one on the west and instead of being aligned for the winter solstice, these are aligned with the equinoxes with one facing the rising sun and the other the setting sun.  In addition to the main mound, there are 17 smaller mounds as well as a ring structure known as Woodhenge as it is similar to Stonehenge but made using logs.  Here is a photo of the central mound with some of the smaller mounds around it.

Here is a photo of the western entrance.

Here is one of the smaller mounds.

Here is Woodhenge, It's not nearly as large as Stonehenge.  They think it dates from about 1,000 years after the mounds were built.

Here is a stone in the base ring of the main mound.  The carvings on the stone are some form of calender divided into 16 months with graphics at the end of the lines showing how many days were in that month.  Totals to 365 days.

Here we are entering the eastern entrance to the mound.

Excavations at Knowth have been limited as the site was later used by early Christians and they don't want to destroy the later features to get to the earlier features.

Tomorrow we will be going to Old Mellifont Abbey and the site of the Battle of the Boyne.