Newgrange

The thing about Newgrange is that it is older than Stonehenge.

The other thing is that I was quiet all day because I was paying attention and not because I was hung over. Shhhh.

From the point of pure repetition, this seems to be the most important fact about this Stone Age building. Indeed it may be the only fact because the second most repeated thing about Newgrange is that everything about it is down to your own interpretation.

So what is this Newgrange place that I am talking about? Well one thing I love about travelling is that you can come across amazing important historical sites that you may not have even heard of before. And prior to this trip I had never heard of Newgrange.

This is strange really, as it is older than Stonehenge!

Newgrange is an enormous Stone Age mound with a tunnel through it which precisely lines up with the rising sun on the Winter Solstice, allowing sun to light up the interior chamber on (and only on) the precise moment that the Sun rises over the hills on the other side of the river.

This is an enormous structure. Possibly larger than Stonehenge as well as older, the technological feat of constructing this structure was amazing for it’s time. A time which pre-dates Stonehenge.

The materials used are interesting too and tell us something about the society that lived in the area. Of the two types of stone used in the construction, one type must have come from a quarry inland with the stone transported upriver. The quartz used comes from a source 50 miles away. While there is controversy about the arrangement of the quartz on the building, there is no doubt that it’s very presence gives us a clue about methods of transport and perhaps trading which were in existence in this era. This pre-Stonehenge era.

And Newgrange is not a lone structure. Within 10 minutes drive there are two other fields which contain many more mounds in differing states of repair. At Knouth there is a mound on a similar scale with two tunnels facing in opposite directions for both solstices.

Here you can also see many sousterrain; archeologists for some reason preferring to use the French term for what are tunnels.