Slieve Gullion Passage Tomb ‘It’s satisfying work’ repairing a 5,000-year-old tomb
At 1880ft it is hard to imagine a more scenic or challenging building site than the summit of Slieve Gullion.
But every day a team including archaeologists, engineers, stonemasons and blacksmiths has been trekking to the top of County Armagh’s highest mountain to repair its 5,000 year old passage tomb.
Wednesday might mark the autumn equinox but the structure comes into its own on the winter solstice when light floods the chamber at sunset.
It’s a phenomenon that has been witnessed for thousands of years – but not last year.
“Last year we unfortunately had to close it because we had an engineering report that said that the roof that had been installed in the 1960s had become so corroded and dangerous that it was close to failure,” says Historic Environment Division archaeologist Stuart Alexander.
“We’ve been working for the past year, planning so we could get up here to get this new roof put on.”
That work, it is expected, will be completed in time for the Winter Solstice in three months time.
When the weather is good on Slieve Gullion you can see Dublin – when it is not, you can barely see your feet.
During our visit to the site both scenarios were true within an hour.
And although some of the materials were dropped onto the site by helicopter, most of the building materials have had to be carried up the mountain each day.
That is a hike of about 40 minutes from the mountain’s highest carpark.
It all makes for an unusual but rewarding workplace.
One of those working on the project is blacksmith apprentice Lucas Adams.
Last month he was working on the restoration of two 18th Century cannons at Carrickfergus Castle.
Since then he has been creating a new roof for this much older structure.
“It’s very satisfying being able to go around the country and do a certain type of work in all of these ancient places,” he said.
“We had to replace the roof. All the steel beams had been corroded. So it needed four new steel beams with new plates and a new cage for light to come in.”
Whilst this is not quite the same as the original Neolithic structure that featured a corbelled flat stone roof, the work is being done to the satisfaction of the HED, a subsection of the Department for Communities.
As the tomb is located in an Area of Special Scientific Interest (ASSI), ecological permissions also had to be secured from the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA).
Link to full BBC news article below
