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Bru na Boinne – Newgrange Passage Tomb

Bru na Boinne visitor centre interprets the Neolithic sites of the Boinne Valley including the most famous site, Newgrange passage tomb. We decided to visit Newgrange on our last day in Ireland as a last minute addition to our itinerary that required an early start in Ballyshannon for our drive to Dublin Airport to fit in a guided tour.

Passage tombs are found throughout Europe, and we saw several in The Orkneys including Maeshowe where the guide told us about Newgrange, a site not then on our itinerary. Whilst the tomb is largely intact, the outer walls are reconstructed to represent what it may have looked like in Neolithic times. I am always uncomfortable with modern reconstructions but the while the patterning may be incorrect the imposing white-walled structure is certainly a fitting place for our Neolithic ancestors to start their journey into the next life.

The passage itself is as it was three thousand years ago, a long narrow entrance opens out into six metre (20 feet) high dome that has withstood the elements for thousands of years and is testament to the ingenuity of Neolithic people that their stone structures endure into the modern age. The entrance is aligned to direct sunlight into the dome around the Winter Solstice and a lucky few visitors (determined by lottery) are allowed in those days each year. For the rest of us, the tour includes a short artificial sunrise to demonstrate how the tomb looks when the sun is aligned.

A visit to Newgrange takes an hour, and can only be accessed through the Bru na Boinne visitor centre guided tour. To make the most of your visit explore the visitor interpretive displays before heading out to the tomb.

Looking beyond Newgrange

Passage Tomb Entrance

Prehistoric Pictagrams

A Titanic Memory

Curiosity will conquer fear even more than bravery will.

James Stephens

In 1912, the greatest cruise liner of its day struck an iceberg and sunk with the loss of over 1500 lives. The headline story is well-known, and popular films have retold it until fact and fiction blurred into one for many people but the truth is captured in the individual stories of survivors and the families of the lost souls.

Susie Millar shared her family story with us, her Great Grandfather brought the great engines of Titanic to life in the Belfast shipyard and boarded her bound for New York to start a new life for his two boys. Before he left, he gave each son two new pennies and implored them not to spend them until they were reunited. Susie reached into her pocket and produced the two pennies her Grandfather never got to spend.

For decades, Belfast ignored its part in the Titanic story and it great ship building heritage. James Cameron’s Titanic film epic renewed interest worldwide and Belfast embraced the story to build the stunning Titanic Quarter on the shipyards that once produced Titanic and her sister ships. The structure is symbolic of the tragedy and houses displays detailing the events but the real drama is outside. Wandering the slipway, we imagined the thousands of skilled workers that once swarmed over the great iron leviathans that carried men and women across the world; immigrants, traders, workers and wealthy travellers all sharing the high seas seeking new adventures or a better life.

Titanic Centre – Belfast

Remembering the Iceberg

The Troubles

Our patience will achieve more than our force.

Edmund Burke

The history of English oppression and Ireland’s struggle for independence is a key theme of any tour of the country but it comes into sharper focus once you cross the border into Northern Ireland. Despite a decade of peace, the old hatreds and prejudices are clearly visible in places like Bogside in Derry or the Shankill and Falls Roads areas of Belfast. I did not feel welcomed in these areas by the local community, and it seemed intrusive to thrust even our small tour group into this area of raw tension and passion.

Of course to understand Irish history, you must come to grips with these areas and the sectarian violence that forged their hatreds into steely resistance but the wounds are still raw and it seems wrong to turn their suffering into a tourist photo opportunity. Go by all means but step lightly into the community because its their home not our tourist destination.

The Great Hunger

The safest road to hell is the gradual one–the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.

C.S. Lewis

In 1845, the Irish potato crop failed and the country entered a period of unending hardship and famine that they call the Great Hunger. Travelling through western Ireland, we saw hills scarred by abandoned potato farrows that once produced the staple diet for the Irish people. Productive land that never again produced a sustainable potato crop and is now turned over to sheep and cattle, and remains devoid of the families that once lived here.

Throughout the Great Hunger, the poor died in their thousands and many thousands more chose to immigrate to Australia, Canada and the United States to seek a better life for their families. Even on these voyages of hope, sickness spread rapidly in the cramped and stagnant living conditions and these deaths led many people to call their vessels coffin ships. A bronze sculpture in Murrisk gives graphic voice to their suffering, skeletons flying from the tall masks a reminder that famine still exists in our ever richer world.

In the Doo Lough Valley, 600 starving Irish tenant farmers walked 12 miles to Delphi Lodge seeking food from their landlord. Angry at the interruption to his fine meal, he sent them home and over 200 perished on the return march some literally blown into the bog by the strong icy wind. How an educated and enlightened gentry looked out on deprivation and suffering without pity or remorse for their tenants and fellow humanity is unimaginable to me. Yet similar conditions exist throughout the world in our own enlightened times.

History always repeats if we let it.

Doo Lough – Great Famine Memorial

Coffin Ship Memorial

Ballyshannon Work House

Kilmainham Gaol

It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.

Jonathan Swift

Kilmainham Gaol, on Dublin’s outskirts, is reviled as a place of suffering and death for Irish patriots struggling to free their country from English rule. Yet to the English, Kilmainham was a model gaol for the health and well-being of its prisoners replacing the barbaric conditions of the previous age. Used most notably as a political prison, Irish revolutionaries imprisoned there are synonymous with Ireland’s struggle for independence. Its last prisoner, Eamon de Valera, became President of the Irish Republic and led his people to develop a socially and culturally conservative society shunning militant republicanism.

The prison lay derelict for decades until local historians sought to preserve it as a significant site in Irish history, and the restored buildings evoke unease as you listen to the guide’s stories of those incarcerated here. Of course, many petty criminals and brutal thugs also spent time in Kilmainham, and it would be wrong to impart on them the sympathy accorded the political prisoners although some were equally brutal in their pursuit of independence.

Kilmainham offers a glimpse of Irish history through the lens of political imprisonment, a stirring and tragic tale that only tells one side of a multifaceted history but a story any visitor to Ireland should understand before heading deeper into the country and its history.

Cell Block – Kilmainham

Trust in Her

Constrained Movement

A Republic in Waiting.

From Kells to Trinity College

I bring to you with reverent hands the books of my numberless dreams.

W.B.Yeats

In 9th Century A.D. Ireland, Monks brought a richly illustrated copy of the Four Gospels to Kells and established a Columban Monastery. The Monks had created this masterpiece on Iona, Scotland but fearing its destruction they brought it home to Ireland for safekeeping. The Book of Kells is now held at Trinity College in Dublin, and is widely regarded as one of the finest examples of Dark Age art in Europe but almost no one remembers the small hamlet of Kells whose people kept the text safe for hundreds of years.

We visited Trinity College on our first day, a long wait in line, jostling crowds in the exhibit and an excited crowd of Freshers outside overwhelmed the actual experience of viewing this famous artefact. Housed in the Old Library, it is the most famous of thousands of manuscripts housed in this venerable place of learning. Not unlike the Mona Lisa in Paris, the Book of Kells is on everyone’s must see list for Dublin but most will file past the open pages swept along by the crowd, ticking a box on their list without really understanding the history or sacrifice required to create and preserve this beautiful text.

The Monks, great artisans and keepers of the Faith through the Dark Ages, created a text that evokes the majesty and splendour of Heaven and illuminates the Word of God for those privileged to be able to read the Gospels.

On our side trip to Ballyshannon, Colleen and I took a short detour to Kells and visited the village that preserved this copy of the Gospels for the modern tourist. St Columba’s Church stands on the site of the original monastery, and houses a copy of the book and a small historic exhibit of the site. Four great Celtic Crosses adorn the churchyard, and although the monastery is no longer evident in the grounds the history enveloped me as we walked through the graveyard and around the 16th Century church. The generations buried beneath our feet had protected the book for centuries but most would never see it, much less be allowed to read the Holy Gospels for themselves. Their sacrifice allowed us a glimpse into the luminous artistry of an age known for darkness and evil, and I’m glad we had the opportunity to visit the Book of Kells true home.

St Columba’s Church – Kells

Celtic Cross Relief

Trinity College – Freshers Week

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