The weekend before last i went to New Grange. It is a 5000 year old tomb! It was a bit of a bus ride to get there but as you can see from the pictures it was a beautiful day!
This outer wall was actually rebuilt from the original building material in the 1960's though a process called reverse architecture ( If I have remembered correctly)
The New Grange sight and the other smaller tombs around it are just in the middle of a bunch of farm fields.
Some of the large rocks around the outer edge have carvings still visible on them. The stone leading to the entrance is apparently very famous for its carvings (below). The docent claimed there were 3 interpretations for the carvings on the entrance stone. One is that it is a map of the Boyne valley where Newgrange sits. Another is that the swirls represent the shortening days of winter before the winter solace and the lengthening of days after. The final interpretations is that the ancient people of the Boyne valley were just high on some sort of natural drug : p. I think this last hypothesis is a bit of a cop out. But none the less amusing to consider.
What Newgrange is most famous for is this light box at the entrance. On the winter solstace (if it is sunny!) sunlight shines through the box and up a 20 or so foot tunnel and light up the inside room. We got to acyually walk inside and they had a demonstration of what it would look like by using electric lights. It was pretty impressive since the tomb is pitch black otherwise.
I went with several other interns from Trinity. From left to right: Kong, Tornique, Michelle, Scott, and David.
While waiting for our bus to arrive we went into the visitors center. It was very artistically done.
Overall it was a fun trip
No comments:
Post a Comment