Traipsing Through Irish History

Knowth Megalithic Passage Tomb

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Attraction | "Ancient History: Knowth Portal Tomb and Pre-historic site"

Knowth: Detail of Kerbstone Photo - Donore, Ireland

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5000 years old, Knowth, is a huge man-made mound which contains two passages to grave chambers deep in the interior. That makes it older than the pyramids of Egypt or Stonehenge. Its stone-age builders constructed it as a ritual site. An amazing aspect of their community is that despite their obvious skill in stone work, these ancient people apparently lived in simple tents or huts down closer to the river valley.Perched serenely atop a hill overlooking the River Boyne, the site includes the bright green grass of the huge main mound and 17 smaller satellite tumuli.Knowth, along with Newgrange and Dowth, is one of a trio of Megalithic Passage Tombs near to each other in Coun...Read More

5000 years old, Knowth, is a huge man-made mound which contains two passages to grave chambers deep in the interior. That makes it older than the pyramids of Egypt or Stonehenge. Its stone-age builders constructed it as a ritual site. An amazing aspect of their community is that despite their obvious skill in stone work, these ancient people apparently lived in simple tents or huts down closer to the river valley.

Perched serenely atop a hill overlooking the River Boyne, the site includes the bright green grass of the huge main mound and 17 smaller satellite tumuli.

Knowth, along with Newgrange and Dowth, is one of a trio of Megalithic Passage Tombs near to each other in County Meath. Knowth was later used as a settlement and hill fort for early Christian era kings of the Brega kingdom.

Megalithic literally means "huge stones" and these are evident in the kerbstones which surround the base of the main Knowth mound. At Knowth, the existing kerbstones were nearly all decorated with a variety of spirals, serpentines, and other shapes.
It is really interesting to ponder the designs and wonder what function they represented for the ancients. Were they some basic form of writing or symbology, or were they just thought to be pretty shapes? It has been suggested that some of them were a form of lunar calendar and others show a map of the moon's face.

Over the centuries, the crown of the mound slipped down and covered the huge kerbstones, obscuring much of the site until reconstructed by modern archaeologists. The interior passages at Knowth were only discovered in the late 1960s. There are two passages, one coming from the east side and one from the west, ending in small chambers in the interior. It is believed these probably had some alignment with the equinoxes at some point, but due to the subsitence of the mound over time, any alignment that did exist has been lost.

For safety reasons, tourists aren't allowed inside the real chambers at Knowth. There is a modern room cut into the side of Knowth that you can go in and you can peer down one of the passages.

Access to tours of Knowth is through the Brú na Bóinne visitors center. We purchased a family ticket combination with Newgrange for 28 euros. This is a large fraction of the cost of a heritage pass providing access to many sites in Ireland, so you may want to consider getting one of those depending on your travel plans.(This is probably the most expensive one to visit, though.)

With the site tour, you get about an hour at the site. About half of that is taken up by a guide explaining a brief history of Knowth and showing you around a little. You have the remaining half hour to explore around, climb to the top of the main mound, take photos, and enjoy this ancient site. The time went very fast and could have spent another hour just admiring the place.

Brú na Bóinne is a short drive north of Dublin, or there are inexpensive bus tours you can take from Dublin. If there are just one or two of you, it is certainly cheaper to take the bus than to rent a car for a day just to come here.
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Member Rating 5 out of 5 on September 28, 2009

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Newgrange

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Attraction | "Ancient History: Newgrange Portal Tomb"

Newgrange Megalithic Passage Tomb Photo - Newgrange, Dublin, Ireland

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How many times in your life do you get to stand in a room constructed in prehistoric times? Newgrange is your opportunity to experience such a site. Not just old, but ancient. Prehistoric as in before anyone you have ever learned about. The builders of Newgrange were long forgotten before the time of Beowulf, Jesus, Buddha, Alexander, Moses, or King Tut.Owing to its more reconstructed state, Newgrange is the most spectacular of the three neighboring passage tombs of Knowth, Dowth, and Newgrange. Dating to around 3200 B.C., Newgrange is a massive man-made mound of earth 90 meters in diameter covering a long-hidden interior burial chamber. The interior chamber features a corbelled r...Read More

How many times in your life do you get to stand in a room constructed in prehistoric times? Newgrange is your opportunity to experience such a site. Not just old, but ancient. Prehistoric as in before anyone you have ever learned about. The builders of Newgrange were long forgotten before the time of Beowulf, Jesus, Buddha, Alexander, Moses, or King Tut.

Owing to its more reconstructed state, Newgrange is the most spectacular of the three neighboring passage tombs of Knowth, Dowth, and Newgrange. Dating to around 3200 B.C., Newgrange is a massive man-made mound of earth 90 meters in diameter covering a long-hidden interior burial chamber. The interior chamber features a corbelled roof that has held up and remained water tight for 50 centuries. The most famous feature of this interior chamber is that it is illuminated only at the winter solstice by a shaft of light which enters through a strategically placed roof box over the entrance.

The entrance to the chamber is guarded by a massive kerbstone with multiple spirals on its face. The ancient designs on these kerbstones have carried forward as motifs in celtic art thoughout the ages.

The best part of the Newgrange tour is that you actually get to go inside the ancient chamber in the mound. Ducking your head under the stone-lined passage roof, after 19 meters you enter the actual chamber. On three sides are smaller sub-chambers which contain massive basin stones which held cremated human remains. As part of the experience, the guides turn off the lights, and use an artificial light to demonstrate the phenomenon of the winter solstice light beam entering the center chamber.

Outside of the main mound entrance, there are several massive standing stones. Additionally, there are 97 huge kerbstones around the perimeter, decorated with megalithic designs. The facade of bright white quartz was reconstructed using stones found on site.

You gain access to Newgrange through the Brú na Bóinne visitors center. Try to get there early as it can get very busy and all the tour slots for the day can sell out. If you aren't there right at the start of the day, expect to wait an hour or two for your allotted tour time. But there is plenty to see and learn in the nice visitors center, which also has a somewhat pricey cafeteria. About 15 minutes before your tour begins, you walk a few hundred meters, across a pretty bridge over the Boyne, to the bus parking lot. Shuttles for both Newgrange and Knowth depart from this point. After a few minutes ride, you are let off at Newgrange. A tour guide provides some history, and escorts you into the interior chamber. Your tour provides enough time to walk the rest the way around the mound and take a few photos.

Take some time to ponder what these primitive people were able to accomplish: The working and transporting of these huge stones. The engineering to construct the passage and chamber roofs that have held up for millenia. The astronomical observations and precision alignment to catch the solstice light. The massive undertaking of building up the mound. The mystical designs carved into the stones, whose purpose modern scientists can only guess at. It truly is a magical place to visit and one of the best prehistoric sites I've ever seen.

At the visitors center, you can also enter a lottery for tickets to enter the Newgrange chamber on the winter solstice (or a day or two on either side) and experience the event first-hand. Good luck! Read Less

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on September 28, 2009

Newgrange
Slane
Co. Meath, Ireland
+353 41 24488

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Proleek Dolmen

Attraction | "Masterful Stone Balancing"

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One thing I've really enjoyed on my two trips to Ireland is that you can't drive 10 miles without encountering something worth stopping to see. Many of these sites are megalithic monuments: dolmen, gallery graves, standing stones, stone circles, and more. They are scattered all across Ireland, some in great shape, some barely recognizable.Proleek Dolmen is one of these stone-age constructions, only a couple miles detour off the main Dublin-Belfast motorway. A dolmen, or portal tomb, consists of typically three huge base stones, and another huge boulder balanced on top. They are called portal tombs because the base stones act as a doorway to the interior where a body would be interred. ...Read More

Member Rating 5 out of 5 on September 30, 2009

Proleek Dolmen
2 miles north of Dundalk
County Louth, Ireland

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Navan Fort (Emain Macha)

Attraction | "Encounter The Time of Legends at Navan Fort"

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Just west of the city of Armagh is Navan Fort and Visitor Center, the ancient seat of early Ulster kings and queens. Also known by its legendary name of Emain Macha, the site is a setting for several fabled and historical figures in early Irish history. One of the more prominent is Queen Macha. While pregnant, her husband wagered that she could win a footrace against a horse. She was forced to participate or have her unborn child killed. She won the race and gave birth to twins, but casting a curse on Ulster men for nine generations for having to endure the race.The Navan visitors center does a much better job of explaining this legend and several other Celtic heroes through displays and...Read More

Just west of the city of Armagh is Navan Fort and Visitor Center, the ancient seat of early Ulster kings and queens. Also known by its legendary name of Emain Macha, the site is a setting for several fabled and historical figures in early Irish history. One of the more prominent is Queen Macha. While pregnant, her husband wagered that she could win a footrace against a horse. She was forced to participate or have her unborn child killed. She won the race and gave birth to twins, but casting a curse on Ulster men for nine generations for having to endure the race.

The Navan visitors center does a much better job of explaining this legend and several other Celtic heroes through displays and videos.

The site was occupied from around 600 BC to 500 AD. Around 95 BC, Queen Macha built a great Celtic temple, having four concentric circles of oak posts which have been located by modern archaeologists. For reasons which aren't understood, the temple was burned and filled with stones, then covered in earth, which resulted in the large mound that you can see and climb today.

Besides the ancient mound and multi-media displays of the visitor's center, the third part of your visit here is a visit to an iron-age (early Christian era) living history village, including demonstrations in various aspects of iron-age life.

We did not have much time to spend visiting Navan Fort and Visitor's Center. You should really allow for 2-3 hours, depending on your interests. We really felt badly that we didn't have more time to spend. I'm sure I've done a horrible job introducing the legends and archaeological history here, but the center is staffed by very eager, informative docents. I really give a lot of credit to the staff for their infectious enthusiasm for the site.

If you want to just visit the historical mound site, you can visit it for free on your own, with help of a brief brochure. There is a charge for the visitor center and iron age village.

This Navan hill fort should not be confused with the town named Navan further south in the republic of Ireland.
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Member Rating 4 out of 5 on September 30, 2009

Navan Fort (Emain Macha)
81 Killylea Rd.
Armagh, Northern Ireland

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Grey Abbey

Attraction | "Irish Abbeys and Monasteries of the Middle Ages"

Angel from the Book of Kells Sign Photo - Dublin, Ireland

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Once St. Patrick started the ball rolling, Christianity flourished in Ireland during the middle ages. Many large and important monasteries were founded across Ireland and you can visit the ruins of many of them today. I am not exactly sure what the attraction of wandering through the rubble and partial walls is, but it is enjoyable. At a few of them, you are rewarded with viewing an ornately carved high cross, such as at Monasterboice, which is just off the main Dublin-Belfast motorway. One legacy of these monasteries is the Book of Kells, an beautifully illustrated bible produced about the year 800. The Book of Kells is on display at Trinity College in Dublin, along with other ancient books, incl...Read More

Member Rating 3 out of 5 on September 30, 2009

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Recent History: Tracing Irish Family Origins

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Grey Abbey Ruins Photo - Greyabbey, Northern Ireland

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A more recent type of history that is of interest to many visitors to Ireland is their Irish family heritage. Over 36 million Americans have some bit of Irish ancestry. This fact, coupled with the continued popularity of genealogy as a hobby makes tracing Irish family history a common goal of visitors to the island.During our recent trip, we were able to visit the graveyard containing the tombstone of my 3-great-grandparents, the towns they were from, and a field that was part of the actual farm that my 2-great-grandfather left to come to the U.S. It takes a lot of digging, a variety of good maps, and some luck to trace your family to specific locations back in Ireland. I was...Read More

A more recent type of history that is of interest to many visitors to Ireland is their Irish family heritage. Over 36 million Americans have some bit of Irish ancestry. This fact, coupled with the continued popularity of genealogy as a hobby makes tracing Irish family history a common goal of visitors to the island.

During our recent trip, we were able to visit the graveyard containing the tombstone of my 3-great-grandparents, the towns they were from, and a field that was part of the actual farm that my 2-great-grandfather left to come to the U.S.

It takes a lot of digging, a variety of good maps, and some luck to trace your family to specific locations back in Ireland. I was lucky in that earlier generations had done some investigating already and had written down what they found, including statements from children of my immigrant ancestor. From this history, I at least knew the town to look in. Most recently, I've been aided by
Griffith's Valuation (household listings) and related maps
and historical and modern maps at the Ordnance Survey of
Northern Ireland

There are some excellent places in Ireland to do genealogical research, such as in Dublin. But if, like most people, you will have limited amount of time and are looking for ancestral connections as a small part of a general tour of Ireland, you really want to do your research from home beforehand. That way you can save your precious vacation time for actually visiting your ancestral sites. Who wants to spend their entire vacation holed up in a library? (Or, more importantly, who wants to spend their vacation waiting while their more interested spouse spends his/her days rooting around a library.) Digging through the records, following leads, and writing letters and receiving replies all take time you probably won't have while on your trip, so do the work at home so you can have your destinations planned out. Read Less

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Modern History: Londonderry Context for the Troubles

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Londonderry: protestant section murals Photo - Derry, Northern Ireland

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We're suckers for the chance to walk on city walls, so we decided to drive over to Londonderry for a day of our Northern Ireland vacation. It is one of the few cities in Europe whose inner core is still surrounded by intact, fortified city walls. Londonderry's thick walls date to 1618, built to protect protestant British colonists from the Catholics (local and English). While we came for the 400 year old battlements and history, we wound up getting an excellent lesson in the 20th century Catholic-Protestant "troubles" of Northern Ireland.After our lunch, we decided to book a walking tour (we'd also considered the double decker bus tours). It turned out to be a fantastic choice, as our e...Read More

We're suckers for the chance to walk on city walls, so we decided to drive over to Londonderry for a day of our Northern Ireland vacation. It is one of the few cities in Europe whose inner core is still surrounded by intact, fortified city walls. Londonderry's thick walls date to 1618, built to protect protestant British colonists from the Catholics (local and English). While we came for the 400 year old battlements and history, we wound up getting an excellent lesson in the 20th century Catholic-Protestant "troubles" of Northern Ireland.

After our lunch, we decided to book a walking tour (we'd also considered the double decker bus tours). It turned out to be a fantastic choice, as our enthusiastic guide reeled off a series of anecdotes about the early history, recent history, and lighter topics as we visited St. Columba's Cathedral and traversed the ramparts. But the narrative of the tour inevitably spiraled back to its focus of the 20th century troubles and the historical buildup to them.

Derry's ancient history stretches to the early days of Christian Ireland when St. Columba founded a monastery there. Derry's name changed to Londonderry when the guilds of London financed the building of the new city in the early 1600s.

An early low point in Londonderry's Catholic-Protestant relations was the siege of 1689 by the army of the Catholic James II. The walls were never breached during that or any other siege. There is an famous stained glass window in the cathedral showing the relief of the 1689 siege.

Fast forward a few centuries and our guide explained that the eruption of modern troubles in the 1960s wasn't so much from religious intolerance as from the usual culprits of economic and political freedoms since the Catholic majority in the city was underrepresented politically and had few jobs.

In the 1980s, I'd seen U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday" video made on the steps of Sacre Coeur in Paris, but I've never had as good an explanation of the facts and context behind it until having it explained in Londonderry, while overlooking the former Catholic slum district of Bogside where the strife erupted.

In Londonderry, there are visible reminders of the troubles in the form of house-sized murals, all visible from atop the city walls. The Protestant's most visible mural echos the "No Surrender!" slogan from the 1689 siege (reminding us they don't want to be an oppressed minority in their long-time home), while the Catholic side paintings include a portrait of a school girl killed early on, their famous, "Welcome to Free Derry" sign and the peace mural with its rainbows and doves theme.

While I'd read of the violence, marches, and politics in newspapers over the years, I never had anywhere near the understanding provided by this tour. The explanations made the tour so much more worthwhile than just admiring 400 year old stonework. Finally, most encouraging part of the tour was our guide's optimism that lasting peace has come for Northern Ireland as a result of peace negotiations mediated by US President Bill Clinton. Read Less

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