NEWGRANGE


Newgrange is one of Ireland’s most significant prehistoric monuments, for it is among the world’s earliest great pieces of architecture – probably older than the Pyramids, and only slightly younger than the Temples in Malta.

In early Irish mythology, Newgrange had an important role to play. It had the name Bru na Boinne (bru is a dwelling, a hall or a mansion). It was considered to have been built by the Dagda, the good god of the Tuatha De Danann, a people who had occupied Ireland but had retired to the fairy mound and forts of the island when the Gaels came and took the country form them. Newgrange was said to have been the place where the great mythical hero Cuchulainn was conceived by his mother Dechtine, his spiritual father, Lugh, visited Dechtine in a dream. In ancient storytelling, the Bru was seen not just as a burial site but as a place of which people with supernatural qualities could come and go.

The actual mound or cairn is nearly forty feet high and about three hundred feet in diameter and contains some 200,000 tons of earth and stone. The base of the mound is supported by great kerb stones, eight to ten feet long, many bearing geometric decorations on both inside and outside faces. The stone marking the entrance to the tomb is sculptured with a triple spiral, double spirals, concentric semi-circles, and diamond shaped motifs known as lozenges.

The most remarkable feature of this monument is the construction of the roof-box over the entrance and its alignment with the rising of the sun on December 21st, the winter solstice. If the day is clear, the rays of the rising sun will shine through the opening in the roof-box and penetrate along the passage right into the chamber. This phenomenon was first recorded by the late Professor M. J. O’Kelly during the winter solstice of 1969.


Sources:

Treasures of the Boyne Valley by Peter Harbison
The Boyne – A Valley of Kings by Henry Boylan


Back