Creativity, History and Technology

Royal Sites

Tara, Co Meath

Tara is perhaps the best known of the early Irish royal sites.

By the Historic period, it had attained an eminence in contemporary cultural consciousness, which it has retained, almost to this present day. Its importance appears to have been largely symbolic, but in our earliest sources it is clearly identified as the focus or 'capital' of the kingdom of Brega, a region largely coterminous with the modern county Meath.

It seems likely that the bulges result from a deliberate attempt on the part of the builders to accommodate earlier monuments, that the rampart had to deviate to enclose earlier sites might suggest poor forward planning, but it may be that the deviations were intended to visibly proclaim the inclusion of these monuments by exaggerating the effect of their presence on the later enclosure.

The Hill of Tara is located about mid-way between the towns of Dunshaughlin and Navan, in south central Meath.

The monuments lie on a low ridge some 2 km long and roughly 155m above sea level.

The ridge drops steeply to the west with dramatic views over the central plain of the Irish midlands.

The first recorded survey of the monuments at Tara is found in a collection of topographic texts known as Dínnseanchas (the lore of placenames), the earliest version of which occurs in the Book of Leinster dating to about 1160 AD.

Various monuments and natural features are named and tales about them recorded.

The fanciful Medieval names were re-assigned to the monuments in the 19th century, notably by John O'Donovan and George Petrie as part of their work for the Ordinance Survey. Some of these names, ultimately the result of what was a Medieval archaeological survey, are now in common usage and are applied to a variety of enclosures, burial mounds and linear earthworks, eg Ráth Gráinne. Over thirty monuments are visible on the hill and many again have been identified through aerial photography or geographical survey. The principal monuments extend over an area some 900m in length from south to north and include a number of enclosures and a large number of burial mounds. To the south is a partially destroyed enclosure named Ráth Laoghaire - 'the fort of Laoghaire (an early historic king of Tara) with an overall diameter of approximately 130m.

It seems to consist of a rampart with internal ditch, but there may be slight traces of another bank within the ditch.

The largest enclosure on the hill has been named Ráith na Rí - 'the fort of the kings.'

It is an earthwork of roughly oval plan measuring approximately 310m north-south and 210m east-west.

It encloses some 70,000m2 of the summit and is one of those fairly rare hilltop enclosures characterised by an internal fosse and external bank, a type found at Navan and Knockaulin.

At least 5 monuments are known to occur within Ráith na Rí: they include Dumha na nGiall(Mound of the Hostages), Dumha na mBó (a mound noted on the 1st edition of the Ordinance Survey maps, but destroyed by agriculture since then), the Forradh and Teach Chormac.

Part of the rampart has been incorporated into modern field boundaries and modified by the addition of a stone wall along the top. Examination of its ground plan reveals that at various points the rampart deviates from its elliptical curve.

The aberrations cannot all be explained by local topographic anomalies, and it seems that some were created intentionally.

Two of these bulges correspond with known monuments, namely Dumha na mBó and Mound of the Hostages, and a 3rd with a very low circular feature - 40m in diameter due west of the Forradh revealed by aerial photography.

I have visited the above mentioned sites and Rath Croghan in Roscommon. I have enjoyed the history surrounding those sites and reread the accounts of them from time to time.

We must value our history, even though there are times that we are ashamed to be part of that history.