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Newgrange
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The most famous of all Irish prehistoric monuments, Newgrange is one of the finest European passage-tombs. Built atop a small hillock, this site was discovered accidentally by the removal of material for road-metalling in 1699. The great tombs of Knowth and Dowth are nearby, and in the same 3sq mi area of the Boyne valley are grouped more than 30 prehistoric monuments : standing stones, barrows, and enclosures.
Newgrange was originally built about 3100 BC and today is in a much restored form. It consists of a vast stone and turf mound about 280ft in diameter and 44ft high, containing a passage leading to a burial chamber. Outside the base, 12 out of the original estimated 38 large boulders up to 8ft high form a ring of about 340ft in diameter. The stone circle was built about 1000 years later than the original structure, dating probably from the Beaker period. This ring of stones is almost unique in Great Britain and Ireland, with Clava and maybe Loanhead of Daviot being the other notable examples.
The base of the mound is retained by no less than 97 large stones, lying horizontally, many of which bear beautifully carved designs of spirals, lozenges, zigzags, and other symbols. The most famous of these is the stone marking the entrance, with carvings of a triple spiral, double spirals, concentric semi-circles, and lozenges similar to those found in Brittany (France), at Gavrinis.
Above the entrance passage is a 'roof-box', which precisely aligns with the rising sun at the winter solstice of 21 December, so that the rays touch the ground at the very centre of the tomb for about 20 minutes. Many of the upright stones along the walls of the 62ft passage, which follows the rise of the hill, are richly decorated.
The cruciform chamber inside the mound measures 21ft 6in x 17ft, has three recesses, and is topped by a magnificent corbelled roof reaching to a height of 20ft above the floor. In the recesses are three massive stone basins which presumably had some ritual use. Excavations in the central chamber produced the remains of two burials and at least three cremated bodies as well as seven marbles, four pendants, two beads, a flint flake, a bone chisel, and fragments of several bone pins and points.
There has been controversy over the reconstruction of the white quartz wall on top of the South-East sector of the kerb, which was based on the position of the white quartz layers found during excavations between 1962 and 1975. Michael O'Kelly, who worked for 13 years on the mound, searched diligently but in vain for traces of a second burial chamber, though it may be the unexcavated half of the mound.
As at Knowth, some satellite tombs have been found outside the edge of the mound: one of which lies to the east and another to the west of the entrance. Cement posts now mark what was once a double circle of wooden pillars, enclosing Beaker cremation pits.
Newgrange gets its modern name from the fact that by 1142, the site had become part of Mellifont Abbey farm. These farms were known as granges, and by 14th century the site was known only as the 'New Grange'. In early Irish mythology, Newgrange was not only the alleged burial place of the prehistoric kings of Tara, but also the home of a race of Irish supernatural beings, known as 'Tuatha de Danann' : the people of the goddess Danu. Newgrange was also taken to be the house of the patriarchal god Dagda.
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Castlerigg
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Castlerigg is one of the most beautiful stone circles in Britain, set in a splendid position, in an open field crowned by the Lake District's mountains, 700ft above sea level. It is thought to be one of the earliest circles in Britain, and it dates from around 3000 BC.
Thirty-eight stones are placed in an slightly oval shape of 100ft in diameter; a further 10 small stones are arranged as a rectangular enclosure on the south-east side of the ring: this is a feature unique to Castlerigg, nothing similar being present in other stone circles. The largest stone of the circle, not far from the enclosure, is 8ft 3in high and it weighs about 16 tons: most of the others, much smaller, are 3-5ft high. At the north of the ring is an entrance marked by two slightly bigger stones, and about 295ft to the south-west, by a stile at the edge of the field, is a single outlying stone, 3ft high.
There are many theories about Castlerigg's function. In Professor Alexander Thom's opinion, the circle was an astronomical observatory (the tallest stone being in line with November or Samhain sunrise), while Professor Aubrey Burl wrote that one of Castlerigg's many functions may have been to act as an emporium connected with the Neolithic stone axe industry in the Langdales. The close mountainous source of the tuff used for such tools and the stone axes found at the site support this theory. Probably, Castlerigg had a variety of functions: easily approached from all directions, it was probably used for trading, religious ceremonies, and tribal gathering. The rectangular enclosure was excavated in 1882, and only charcoal was found. No other excavation has taken place, either within the enclosure or outside.
The site was first brought to public notice in 1725 by the antiquarian William Stukeley, who wrote that the circle was very entire, consisting of 50 stones, some very large. But in 1849, in his Guide to The Lakes, Jonathan Otley reported the present total of stones. Castlerigg, known to local people as Druid's Circle, is also called Keswick Carles, apparently because of an old legend telling that the stones are petrified men, but in fact for a misunderstanding of William Stukeley's word Carles for Castle.
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The Blarney Stone
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Blarney is celebrated the world over for a stone on the parapet that is said to endow whoever kisses it with the eternal gift of eloquence - the 'Gift of the Gab'. The origin of this custom is unknown, though the word "blarney", meaning to placate with soft talk or to deceive without offending, probably derives from the stream of unfulfilled promises of Cormac MacDermot MacCarthy to the Lord President of Munster in the late sixteenth century. Having seemingly agreed to deliver his castle to the Crown, he continuously delayed doing so with soft words, which came to be known as "Blarney talk."
The massive castle, which looks even larger because of its picturesque situation on the edge of a cliff, was supposedly built in 1446 by Cormac MacCarthy "the Strong", probably on the site of a castle occupied by the Lombards, whom the MacCarthys had displaced. It has an L-shaped plan with five storeys, the lower two being under a pointed vault with walls 12 feet thick; higher up the walls get thinner and the rooms bigger. The building sequence is a little puzzling, but the slender tower containing the main stair and a tier of small rooms evidently predates the main block. The whole is crowned with high stepped battle ments, projecting more than 2 feet beyond the walls and carried by long inverted pyramid corbels. The MacCarthys held onto the castle with a few inter ruptions until the Williamite wars, when Donagh MacCarthy, the fourth Earl of Clancarty, supported the losing side and had his estates forfeited. It is said that before leaving he cast the family silver into the lake. The property was acquired by Sir John Jefferys, who built a Gothic-style house onto the castle with pointed windows and curvilinear pinnacled battements. This was burnt c. 1820, but a semi circular staircase tower still remains. Nearby the family made a megalithic garden folly and in 1874 they built a Scottish Baronial-style house overlooking the lake in the park.
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