The winter solstice has just passed and the days are getting longer again. Pagans and Druids gather at Stonehenge to observe this which looks to me pretty dull. If you’d like to see something more spectacular travel to Ireland and Co. Meath.
Newgrange was built about 5,000 years ago; at least 500 years before Stonehenge and the Great Pyramid of Giza , during the Neolithic period. It is in the Boyne valley and there are thirty-five similar passage tombs in the same area. Newgrange is the best preserved and restored, you could say over-restored. Visitors enter the mound via a narrow passageway 19 metres long at the end of which they enter a circular chamber. There are three smaller chambers leading off the main one. Here is the entrance as it was in 1905 and, below, as it is today.
First you will notice the spiral patterns carved on the stone in front of the entrance. There are more of these carved kerbstones around the base of the mound. Some of the stones lining the passage are also carved.
Now take a look at the rectangular aperture above the entrance. This is called a roofbox and is significant because at the winter solstice when the sun rises it shines directly into this opening and creeps along the passageway until it reaches the main chamber. This today begins four minutes after sunrise but 5,000 years ago it would have been precisely at sunrise. The sun shines into the chamber for seventeen minutes. It must be a spectacular sight if you are lucky enough to witness it on a sunny, solstice morning. There is a ballot for places in the chamber. You can enter on the Newgrange website but success doesn’t guarantee you sunshine in Ireland in December.
If you visit on any other day of the year you can still get some idea of what it’s like. There is an electric lamp which imitates the rising of the sun.
All a lot more fun than Stonehenge but not such fun as it was when I was a child. In those days you knocked on the door of a nearby cottage to be given a key to the site and candles to take into the tumulus. It was all rather spooky.
Nearby is the site of the Battle of the Boyne, the largest and best preserved Norman castle in Ireland at Trim, and High Crosses at Monasterboice. Muiredach’s High Cross was carved at least 1,000 years ago. It depicts episodes from the bible and also images of the abbots at Monasterboice. Interestingly they start being clean-shaven and then develop luxuriant moustaches as Vikings became abbots.
