Ireland (Lonely Planet, 9th Edition) - Fionn Davenport [467]
Over time, Newgrange, like Dowth and Knowth, deteriorated and was at one stage even used as a quarry. The site was extensively restored in 1962 and again in 1975.
A superbly carved kerbstone with double and triple spirals guards the tomb’s main entrance, but the area has been reconstructed so that tourists don’t have to clamber in over it. Above the entrance is a slit, or roof box, which lets light in. Another beautifully decorated kerbstone stands at the exact opposite side of the mound. Some experts say that a ring of standing stones encircled the mound, forming a great circle about 100m in diameter, but only 12 of these stones remain, with traces of some others below ground level.
Holding the whole structure together are the 97 boulders of the kerb ring, designed to stop the mound from collapsing outwards. Eleven of these are decorated with motifs similar to those on the main entrance stone, although only three have extensive carvings.
The white quartzite that decorates the tomb was originally obtained from Wicklow, 70km to the south – in an age before horse and wheel, it was transported by sea and then up the River Boyne – and there is also some granite from the Mourne Mountains in Northern Ireland. Over 200,000 tonnes of earth and stone also went into the mound.
You can walk down the narrow 19m passage, lined with 43 stone uprights (some of them engraved), which leads into the tomb chamber about one-third of the way into the colossal mound. The chamber has three recesses, and in these are large basin stones that held cremated human bones. As well as the remains, the basins would have held funeral offerings of beads and pendants, but these were stolen long before the archaeologists arrived.
Above, the massive stones support a 6m-high corbel-vaulted roof. A complex drainage system means that not a drop of water has penetrated the interior in 40 centuries.
At 8.20am on the winter solstice (sometime between 19 and 23 December), the rising sun’s rays shine through the roof box above the entrance, creep slowly down the long passage and illuminate the tomb chamber for 17 minutes. There is little doubt that this is one of the country’s most memorable, even mystical, experiences. There is a simulated winter sunrise for every group taken into the mound, but to be in with a chance of witnessing the real thing add your name to the list that is drawn by lottery every 1 October.
KNOWTH
Northwest of Newgrange, the burial mound of Knowth (adult/child incl visitor centre €5/3; Easter-Oct) was built around the same time and seems set to surpass its better-known neighbour in both its size and the importance of the discoveries made here. It has the greatest collection of passage-grave art ever uncovered in Western Europe, and has been under excavation since 1962.
The excavations soon cleared a passage leading to the central chamber, which at 34m is much longer than the one at Newgrange. In 1968, a 40m passage was unearthed on the opposite side of the mound. Although the chambers are separate, they’re close enough for archaeologists to hear each other at work. Also in the mound are the remains of six early-Christian souterrains (underground chambers) built into the side. Some 300 carved slabs and 17 satellite graves surround the main mound.
Human activity at Knowth continued for thousands of years after its construction, which accounts for the site’s complexity. The Beaker folk, so called because they buried their dead with drinking vessels, occupied the site in the Bronze Age (c 1800 BC), as did the Celts in