Rupert and I had a great time while filming in Ireland. It wasn’t always easy – the exhaust fell off the camper travelling north from Killarney – and in some areas we felt we didn’t quite do it justice, but the experience at all the sites was just great.
However, there was one major disappointment. Newgrange looks amazing- there’s no doubt about that. No other megalithic monument that I can think of looks so complete and one’s assumption from looking at photographs is that the reconstruction of the site is an accurate representation of how it looked when it was first built. But when we first arrived there (we took the tourist tour) and walked up towards that gleaming facade, alarm bells began to ring. Somehow you acquire an instinctive feel for what works and what doesn’t when you’ve been visiting as many sites as we had. You get used to the way the earth naturally finds its own slope and how long barrows and burial mounds are generally built to work with the laws of gravity and slippage. They certainly don’t fight them. Sure, some near vertical surfaces are achieved in some cases – usually in the lower fringes and if there is a constructed forecourt to the monument – but they are managed by using either massive slab stones or by structured dry stone building techniques. What is immediately apparent when walking up to the front of the Newgrange mound is that there is some kind of trickery going on. Yes, the dark stone forecourt area is a structured build – but the steep white quartz facade? What’s holding that up? The answer, I’m afraid, is concrete.
The following clip is the whole section from the film about the Boyne Valley complex and we do try to honour (in the time we have) the incredible sophistication of the entire site and in particular the construction of Newgrange’s central chamber with its alignment. However, it gets controversial at about the 2.05 mark.
Rupert and I knew nothing of the controversy about the reconstruction of Newgrange before we walked up to it that day. The views expressed by Rupert in the clip here are entirely his own and acquired during the few days we were at the Boyne Valley complex. However, we are not alone in our dismay – the following is an extract from “Britain B.C.”, a book by the well known archaeologist and broadcaster, Francis Prior, famous for his discovery of the Flag Fen archaeological site and his appearances on Channel 4’s Time Team.
“The excavator, Professor Michael O’Kelly, thought he had found evidence in the rubble of the forecourt for a steep, high revetment, or mound support-cum-edging, made from white quartz and a scattering of granite. This interpretation has been challenged many times, and I well recall the cries of anguish in the academic press when the plans to reconstruct were announced. But when you actually see it, all doubts vanish: it doesn’t look like something prehistoric people could have built. It’s as simple as that. Today the vast green mound at Newgrange resembles a chirpy pillbox hat with a bright white hatband – something Aer Lingus might one day adopt for its stewardesses.
What makes the entire concoction worse is its height and angle – so steep that it has to be reinforced by a hidden concrete wall, or it would collapse due to the pressure of the mound it skirts. Frankly, it should be removed and hidden in some way, and soon. We all know how hard it is to erase a striking image, however false, from the public imagination: Boudica’s chariot with its revolving knives, the Vikings in their horned helmets and King Arthur in his shining plate armour will be with us for a long time to come. It would be a travesty if one day the Irish Neolithic were to be represented in the popular mind by that grotesque hatband.”
Just in case you thought Rupert’s opinion was a bit strong!
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Well, yes, my opinions are a bit strong but I like to think I remain objective! I have to admit that after Mike and I had really cast an analytical eye over Newgrange I was genuinely angry. Not in a shouty way of course, but astonished at the fact that such a huge dishonesty had been constructed at public expense. There’s enough fairy tale stuff surrounding ancient sites without official bodies making it worse. Especially when one section of nearby Knowth shows that it is far more likely that the white quartz made up a gleaming white pavement. There… rant over… Again.
Rupert
