The 12 days of Solstice - Day 7 - the eastern recess of Newgrange, the holy of holies, and its giant basins

It's day seven of 'The 12 days of Solstice' and today's image features the eastern (right-hand) recess in the chamber of Newgrange. This is clearly a very sanctified space, a "holy of holies", so to speak. It is the largest of the three recesses and has features that endow it with a particular sense of preeminence, a place almost beyond encroachment by human thought or deed.

The recess features a highly decorated ceiling stone, something not shared by the other recesses (admittedly the end recess has the famous tri-spiral carved into a stone forming its side wall). It effectively has two basin stones - one sitting upon the other. The smaller of the two features two hollow depressions towards its rim, the purpose of which is not entirely clear. The larger "basin" is in fact an enormous slab whose top surface has been hollowed somewhat. It is clear that this giant slab must have been in position BEFORE all of the surrounding orthostats were put in place. It is certainly not the sort of thing that could have been dragged up the passage and hauled into place in the chamber after these structures had been completed. All of this begs a question - was this giant stone the first piece of Newgrange to be put in place when construction began? By necessity, it must have been one of the earliest phases of the construction of the monument we know today as Newgrange.

What took place in this sanctified space? Were these basins used for the placement of the fragmented remains of the dead? Over 2,000 bone fragments were found at Newgrange. Many were so small as to be unrecognisable. We are told at least five individuals were represented in the remains. But it could be a lot more. Clearly, there were methods of defleshing/excarnation, cremation, and perhaps there were even processed involving the pulverization of the remains of the dead. Were the bone fragments also washed before deposition in the sacred spaces within Newgrange and its sister sites?

The eastern recess might be dry today, but that certainly was not always the case:

Time and time again, from the rediscovery of the chamber in 1699 up until O'Kelly's installation of a protective concrete umbrella over the vault, water had been found to be dripping or trickling into the monumental slab and bowl in the righthand recess.(1)

This presence of water, despite the laborious efforts of the builders to redirect the flow of water across the capping stones of the passage, etc, led one author to suggest that the presence of water in this recess might have been intentional. Jacqueline Ingalls Garnett has speculated that the intention might not have been to deposit bones in the basins, but rather to bring them in there for some special ceremony involving this "holy water".

It is possible that the object was exactly to bring the packet of remains into contact with the solemn, numinous font whose water - perhaps mixed with dew - trickled from the heavens into the righthand-recess bowl. In fact, unless the entire monument had been built in order that one or two sets of bones could be laid in the bowl, the idea may well have been that it was somehow beneficial for the deceased that his bones should have an opportunity however brief to contact the water in the bowl perhaps by dipping or sprinkling.

It's an interesting idea, but one wonders to what extent the huge crack in the ceiling stone (which is obviously not an original feature!) contributed to this water ingress. Furthermore, we might ask if there are other monuments of similar age and design where this is seen to happen and is considered intentional.

Garnett points out something else that is interesting - the fact that a natural spring was present in the passage, a "winter-flowing stream" that emanated from under passage orthostat R8. This spring was culverted during excavation and reconstruction work, but might have been a crucial element of the sacred infrastructure of the site when it was built.

Whatever took place in terms of ritual or ceremonial activity in the eastern recess in prehistory, it remains a space that demands reverence. It's not a room or space that invites one to come in and stand around. It is very much a space that stands alone.

References:
(1) Jacqueline Ingalls Garnett (2005), Newgrange Speaks for Itself - Forty Carved Motifs, Trafford, p. 35.

Folk memory - could local people in 1938 recall details about the construction of Newgrange that would not be confirmed until its later excavation?

I've written before about the apparent curious persistence of local folk memory. You might recall one of the most famous examples - the fact that local people said Venus (the Morning Star) shines into Newgrange on one winter solstice morning every eight years. This had been recorded by Joseph Campbell and written about in 1958 - prior to Professor Michael O'Kelly's excavations and restoration of the roofbox, before which time any such phenomena could not be observed within the chamber. Of course, there's always the possibility that the alignment was observed indirectly, from outside the tomb entrance, and thus deduced by locals. But the thing about folklore is that it cannot always be easily dismissed as just some fanciful story.

The entrance to Newgrange as it appears after Prof. O'Kelly's restoration.

In 1938, the Schools' Collection was being gathered around Ireland by the Irish Folklore Commission. At Monknewtown School, which was one of the closest schools to the great monuments of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth, a man called Gerald Duggan from Dowth recalled some local lore about fairy forts to one of the school pupils. Here are some snippets from Mr. Duggan's recollections about these great monuments:

There are three very important tumulus in this district. They are Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth. They are within view of each other. There is supposed to be a cave running under ground from Newgrange to Dowth. 

This latter claim about a cave connecting two ancient sites is very commonplace in Irish folklore. Many places, including old mounds, forts and even ecclesiastical sites such as monasteries, were said to have been connected by underground tunnels. Perhaps this supposition is based upon the observation of souterrains, of which there is a remarkable proliferation in this northeastern part of Ireland. Mr. Duggan, speaking about Newgrange, says (the spelling is reproduced here exactly from the manuscript):

Outside the entrance there is a large stone with spiral writing on it. Inside in the fort there are two large stones in the shape of a basin. It was the custom long ago for the bodies of pagan kings that died to be buried in these baisins and the ashes used to be burned.

And here's where it gets really interesting:

It is said that it was the Tuatha De Dannans that built those forts. It is said that they brought the stones from the Mourn Mountains to build them.

Gerald Duggan's recollections from the Schools' Collection (© duchas.ie)

It is now postulated by geologists that stones for the construction of Newgrange came from three, and possibly four sites, as follows: (1) The large kerb stones, orthostats and structural stones, which are of greywacke, were brought along the coast from Clogherhead; (2) the milky white quartz stones which form the front wall of Newgrange came from the Wicklow Mountains (although the exact site has never been conclusively located), with a possibility, recently suggested, that this quartz came alternatively from Rockabill Island off the coast at Skerries; (3) the rounded water-rolled granite and granodiorite cobbles which were interspersed with the quartz came from the beach at Rathcor/Templetown, which is on the southern shore of the Cooley Peninsula. It is said that these stones originated in the Mourne Mountains.

In 1938, when the School's Collection was being gathered, the granite cobbles which originated in the Mournes were all buried under the cairn spill - material which had, over time, slipped down from the top of the cairn over the kerb stones and buried the white quartz and rounded cobbles under several feet of stones. When Professor O'Kelly excavated Newgrange, he found this layer of quartz and granite/granodiorite cobbles at the very bottom of the cairn slip. Through experimentation, he postulated that the quartz and water-rolled cobbles had originally formed an almost-vertical facing on the mound, and thus Newgrange was reconstructed in this manner.

The question that arises from all this is this - how did a local man, speaking in 1938, three decades before the excavation of Newgrange, possibly know or have any indication that stones for the construction of Newgrange might have been brought from the Mournes?

Is it possible that some of these cobbles had indeed been found, especially outside the entrance to the tomb, where, in 1699, the land owner Charles Campbell's servants had quarried stone for the construction of his house?

There could be a more prosaic explanation. Perhaps Mr. Duggan was an educated man, who had become aware of the writings of George Wilkinson. Writing in 1845, Wilkinson had suggested that a large stone basin in the chamber of Newgrange was made from granite which originated in the Mournes. Writing in 1912, George Coffey quotes a Mr. R. Clark of the Geological Survey as suggesting that the stone from which this basin was constructed had "more resemblance to some of the granites of the Wicklow series than to those of the Mourne district."

Another story which is interesting was told by a Patrick Walsh of Rushwee, Stackallen, about a giant who lived in a cave near the Boyne:

Stone basin in Newgrange (George Coffey)

The giant lived in the cave at the river Boyne for a long time until an army came and hunted him out of it. It is said that after that he went to the cave at Newgrange and he stayed there until he died and it is said that the people put his body into a stone cup and burned it. The cup that the giant's body was burned in is in the cave at Newgrange yet.

One presumes this "stone cup" referred to is one of the stone basins inside Newgrange. It is interesting that Mr. Walsh's story hints at a funerary use of the ceremonial basins. It is implied by many experts on the great passage-tombs that the interment of the fragmented remains of the deceased were placed carefully in these ritual basins.

In a previous blog post, I discussed the means by which human remains might have been defleshed and cremated such that there were only small fragments left to inter. There is still the tantalising possibility, though, that Mr. Walsh's story is a folk memory of an ancient custom going back deep into prehistory, of burning the corpses of the dead, and placing their fragmented remains in stone basins or urns.