The remarkable geological secret behind the location where the large stones of Newgrange were sourced

The giant kerb stones of Newgrange, and many of those at Knowth, weighing up to five tonnes apiece and more, were sourced along the coastline at Clogherhead, and brought by sea and river to the Bend of the Boyne, where the great megalithic monuments at Brú na Bóinne were built more than 5,000 years ago.

What is not widely known is that Clogherhead holds a fascinating geological secret, one that is extremely unlikely to have been known by the ancient megalithic builders of the Boyne Valley. At this promontory of land that projects out into the Irish Sea from the coast of what is now County Louth, there are rock formations which are vertical. The stones jut up out of the land in jagged layers. It was here that, over five millennia ago, the builders of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth sourced many of the large stones that were used for kerbing, and for orthostats and structural stones.

A map showing the approximate seam or fault line (border) that once separated the two continents.

What the builders did not know was that these jagged rock formations are the result of a significant seismic event 400 million years ago, in which two continents smashed together. It's hard to imagine today, but there is a "border" of sorts running from Clogherhead down to the Shannon Estuary. Everything north of this "border" was once on a continent that has been given the name Laurentia, while everything south of there was on a continent called Avalonia. The types of fossils found either side of this so-called border, which is now called the Iapetus Suture, are very different.

It's hard to believe that Laurentia and Avalonia, and by extention the northern and southern parts of Ireland, were once separated by 3,000 kilometres of ocean! This ocean has (in modern times of course) been given the name the Iapetus Ocean - hence the Iapetus Suture.

The website Ingenious Ireland says the following about the collision of these continents and the different types of fossil found north and south of Ireland's ancient border:

A spiral-shaped fossil at Clogherhead.

The half of Ireland that lies north of the seam was originally joined with Scotland, Greenland and North America in the ancient continent of Laurentia. The south-eastern half of Ireland, along with Wales, England and Brittany, formed the smaller continent of Avalonia. Some 500 million years ago Laurentia lay at the Equator, Avalonia lay further south, and between them was the Iapetus Ocean (Iapetus was the father of Atlantis, after whom the Atlantic Ocean is named).

Fossils from this time found in the northern Laurentian, or ‘American’, half of Ireland are very different from those found in the Avalonian, or ‘European’, half. This reflects the fact that they came from distant parts of the world once separated by 3,000 kilometres of ocean.

An inlet at Clogherhead where it's possible Neolithic mound builders tied large greywacke slabs on to barges.

The builders of Newgrange used the vertical formations of layered greywacke at Clogherhead to their advantage. They were, it seems, able to prise specimens out using something like wooden poles and, we are told by archaeologists, strap them to the underside of a barge. At high tide, the sea would lift the raft, with stone underneath, and the "pilot" of this barge would steer it down the coast and up the River Boyne.

An investigation of the alignment of the passage of Fourknocks passage-tomb

Several years ago I wrote about the Cygnus Enigma and the apparent orientation of Newgrange towards Fourknocks and the orientation of Fourknocks towards a place on the horizon where the brightest star of the swan constellation (Cygnus) would have been rising after its brief glance with the horizon towards the north. Recently I've been looking at this alignment system in more detail, and that study has yielded more interesting results and fascinating possibilities.

SUMMARY

A plan of Fourknocks.

I will summarise what's been written already, before going into new detail. In a nutshell, Newgrange points towards Fourknocks, although neither site is visible from the other. Fourknocks lies about 15km (approx. 9 miles) to the southeast of Newgrange. There are two intervening hills that block the intervisibility of the sites - Red Mountain and Bellewstown. Fourknocks lies at approximately 137.95 degrees of azimuth from Newgrange, according to Google Earth. This would place it on the edge of the range of azimuths covered by the Newgrange solstice alignment, which, according to Patrick (1974) were 133° 42' to 138° 24', while Ray (1989) says the range is 133° 49' to 137° 29'. The best way to try to visualise this is that as the sunlight is retreating from the chamber of Newgrange at solstice, the sun is directly above Fourknocks.

Fourknocks, in turn, has a passage that is aligned to approximately 14° azimuth, in the far northeast. Richard Moore and I had suggested that Fourknocks is aligned in the direction of the Baltray standing stones on the northern side of the Boyne Estuary (Island of the Setting Sun, 2006) and that the two stones lined up to point back towards Fourknocks, even though neither site was visible from the other.

New discoveries

It is this alignment – the axis of the Fourknocks alignment – that has yielded fascinating new information.

Sitting on the sill stone of the rear recess of the Fourknocks chamber, looking out through the passageway to the far horizon, one is looking at a hill towards the north-northeast called Mullaghteelin. Near the summit of Mullaghteelin, directly on the alignment as viewed from Fourknocks, is a barrow (ME027-034----), probably dating to the Bronze Age.

The photograph on right shows the view out through the passage, with Mullaghteelin barrow indicated on the horizon.

Using a map, or better still Google Earth, the alignment can be seen to continue through Donacarney village before crossing the Boyne river and pointing towards the Baltray standing stones. This is where Google Earth has real value in the investigation of long ley lines or straight track alignments. Zooming in on Baltray, we see that both stones are situated on the axis of this alignment from Fourknocks:

The two stones are circled in red - the larger stone has a bigger circle around it. We didn't have this wonderful program when we wrote Island of the Setting Sun in 2006, but it's wonderful to see how accurate the alignment really is. Whether this alignment was created intentionally is an entirely different matter, but one wonders, given the existence of several long-distance alignments of ancient monuments, if indeed the ancients had skills beyond which we give them credit for.

Stones

Here's where it gets really interesting. If you continue the line from Fourknocks beyond Baltray standing stones, you will find that it eventually hits the shoreline on the Irish Sea coast at Clogherhead. It then travels across Dundalk Bay and eventually meets the shoreline of a stony beach on the southern shore of the Cooley peninsula at Rathcor/Templetown. Both of these shores –  Clogherhead and Rathcor/Templetown – were locations where stone for Newgrange was sourced.

Clogherhead (above) was the source of the greywacke slabs that were used as kerbstones, passage orthostats and large structural stones in the chamber of Newgrange. An estimated 200 of these rocks, weighing on average three tonnes apiece, were brought from the shoreline at Clogherhead by boat down along the Irish Sea and up the river Boyne to Brú na Bóinne. For more about the transportation of these greywacke slabs, see Newgrange - Monument to Immortality.

Rathcor and Templetown beaches are littered with rocks of all different types and sizes. Most interesting of these are the granite cobbles which, it is said, were brought from this area to Newgrange to be placed among the white quartz stones that decorate the front of the monument. Again, these would have been transported by sea, across Dundalk Bay, around Clogherhead and then up the Boyne.

So, whether by accident or design, the Fourknocks passage points towards two of the three locations from which it is said that stone was sourced for the construction of Newgrange.

There's more ...

Just for the sake of it, I looked at the alignment in the opposite direction, south-southwest from Fourknocks. Interestingly, it points towards the Blessington Lakes in Co. Wicklow, some 30 miles or 50 kilometres distant approximately. Now this really is a stretch of the imagination, I'll readily admit, but we've all been told that Wicklow is the likely source of the milky quartz at Newgrange, although the exact location or quarry from which it was extracted has never been found. I've heard it suggested that Blessington is a possible source. It could have been transported from that area by barge down the Liffey River into the Irish Sea and from there up to the Boyne.

If the Blessington area turned out to be the source of the Newgrange quartz (and it's by no means anything other than a possibility at this point in time), then the Fourknocks alignment would "point to" all of the major sources of stone for the construction of Newgrange - the greywacke from Clogherhead, the granite cobbles from Cooley and the quartz stones from Wicklow. As it stands, we can say that Fourknocks definitely does point to two areas from which stone was sourced. The third remains an unknown, but Blessington is a possibility.

More recently, Rockabill islands off the coast of Dublin have been suggested as a possible source of the milky quartz at Newgrange. This is equally interesting, because the larger of the two standing stones at Baltray points towards Rockabill for winter solstice sunrise.

Just to finish, the Fourknocks alignment also points to a peak called Eagle Mountain in the Mourne Mountains in the far distance, which are easily visible from Fourknocks on a clear day. I'm not sure if there's any particular significance to this peak to tie in with the alignment. Geologists have told us that the cobble stones from Rathcor/Templetown have their origin in the Mournes. It has recently been revealed that an x-ray study of the granite cobbles of Newgrange is to be undertaken to ascertain their precise original source. Read more here.

On the quest for the Cailleach of Clogherhead

When you stand at the giant amphitheatre-like henge monument near Dowth - the one archaeologists have ingloriously named 'Site Q' - on the morning of summer solstice, the longest day of the year, you will see the sun rising out of the landscape towards the northeast near Castlecoo Hill, at Clogherhead. Site Q has two large openings, one at its south western end, and one at the north east, which both appear to line up towards the solstice sunrise position.

Site Q, the giant henge of Dowth.

The name Castlecoo comes from Caisleáin Có, meaning the "stone fort of the hound", a possible explanation for which is given in 'Island of the Setting Sun' (2006, 2008 by Richard Moore and I). But another townland name on the hill of Castlecoo has long piqued my interest.

That townland is Callystown, which has generally been translated as Baile na gCailleach, the "town of the nuns". Tradition says that there was once a nunnery at Callystown, hence the name. But the issue is not as straightforward as that. The Cailleach was an ancient goddess, revered in prehistoric Ireland in places far and wide. She was known in some places as the Cailleach Bheara / Cally Vera, and although long since reduced to the paltry stature of a "hag" or "crone", it seems that at one time she was a female deity held in very high esteem. Indeed I would draw comparisons between the great Cailleach and goddesses such as Bóann and maybe Brigid, but I will save that for another day.

We know that the Cailleach was revered in this region in ancient times. The hills of Loughcrew, upon which sit ancient passage-cairns that are older than Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, are called Sliabh na Caillighe - the hills of the witch/hag/crone/old woman. She is said to have formed the cairns upon Carnbane East and Carnbane West as she jumped from peak to peak, carrying an apron full of stones, some of which she dropped as she jumped. Curiously, the same story describes the construction of the round tower at Monasterboice in County Louth. According to folk tradition, gathered in the Schools Folklore Collection, the round tower was formed by the Cailleach dropping stones from her apron. In one version of the tale, the Cailleach becomes the Virgin Mary. In another version, she slips from the top of the tower and is killed in the fall to the ground. Not too far away is a stone age wedge tomb called the "Cailleach Bhirra's House". Monasterboice is only six or seven miles west of Clogherhead.

I've long wondered if the Callystown area of Clogherhead was perhaps named more anciently than the arrival of the nuns. Richard and I made a strong case in Island of the Setting Sun for a link between the goddess Bóann and the Moon and Milky Way. Similar connections could be made with the Cailleach, who was venerated all over Ireland and whose name survives in many townlands and even on the Beara Peninsula in Cork, along Ireland's southern extremity.

Thanks to the widespread availability of historical sources on the internet, it now seems as though I've been able to answer that question, or at the very least to throw some doubt and intrigue on the matter. According to an article on the history of the 'Ancient Parish of Clogher and Kilclogher' on the Clogherhead Development Group website, the nuns arrived in Callystown at the turn of the Sixteenth Century.

Writing in 2003, Liam Mac Raghnaill said: "In 1508, a small community of nuns, known as the Black Nuns, arrived at Callystown, where they held 128-acres, a cottage and possibly a small church. They are believed to have moved from Termonfeckin to Callystown as a result of a dispute with the Lord Primate of the time. The convent buildings were thought to have been situated near to the site where Callystown House was later built, but no trace remains."

The case would appear to be closed. Clogherhead's Callystown is so called because the Black Nuns lived there from the Sixteenth Century. However, I decided to reference the Online Placename Database of Ireland (Logainm.ie) to see what further information, if any was available, could be gleaned about this place name.

Callystown and Castlecoe Hill on Google Maps.

Imagine my surprise then, upon browsing the archival records about Callystown, to see that it appears to have been called Callystown before the nuns ever arrived there! In fact, the earliest record, going back all the way to 1301, suggests it had that name a whole two centuries before the nuns came along. As with most place names, the spelling varied throughout history, but it seems that it was known in some form as Callystown in the years and centuries before the nunnery existed there. Here are the various spellings of the place name down through history:

1301 Balykellath
1416 Calyaghtoun
1426 Kylkloghir
1431 Kaillaghton
1431 Cayllaghton
1440 Caalaghton
1471 Kallyaghtown

This last spelling, the one immediately preceding the arrival of the nuns, is almost definitely a rendition 'Cailleach' or 'Cailliagh' and 'town'. So there was a nun in Callystown before the nuns! Or, at least, a hag/crone/ancient goddess - call her what you will.

Because of the prominent position of Callystown/Castlecoo Hill as a horizon "marker" for summer sunrise from the great Boyne Valley monuments, and because of the very strong association of those monuments and their river valley with the goddess Bóann, it should be possible to at least re-consider the origin of  Callystown, and to acknowledge the possibility of another inception for its name.

It is, of course, still possible that there was some sort of nunnery or convent at Callystown before the arrival of the Black Nuns. Interestingly, there is a place at nearby Termonfeckin called 'Nunneryland', and we were told the old Irish name for that place was 'Cailleach Dubh', possibly meaning 'Black Nun'. Because Cailleach also means "veiled one", there is a tendency to associate the word with nuns. But as previously stated, the Cailleach is one of Ireland's most ancient divinities.  Cailleach Dubh can also refer to the cormorant (a bird), but in her guise as a goddess, the Cailleach Dubh is found even in Scotland.

Local tradition in Termonkfecin suggested that there was once an old laneway that ran all the way from Nunneryland to Callystown. Declan Quaile, writing about the old townlands and placenames of the area, said that: "Callystown was always pronounced ‘Calliaghstown’ by the old people, harking back to the original Irish word."  Wikipedia has some interesting information about the Cailleach.

What might be even more fascinating about the apparent connection between Callystown and the Brú na Bóinne monuments is that the hill doesn't precisely mark sunrise on summer solstice, but is probably a more comfortable fit with the rising of the full moon at the time of its northern extreme. Did the ancient monument builders of the Boyne once upon a time see the full moon rising out of Castlecoo Hill at a significant astronomical moment, and did they then name that sacred hill in honour of the great goddess of creation? We might never know, but we can speculate . . .