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The Boyne Valley

Sites A and B
Site C
Sites K and L

Newgrange
The stone circle
The Kerbstones
Excavation
The Passage
The Chamber
Winter solstice
Mythology
Energy lines
Art - The Entrance Stone
Kerbstone 52
Kerbstone 67
The Newgrange henge
The Newgrange Cursus
Site Z

Article by Tom Ray
Macalister's Guidebook

The Great Mound at Knowth
The East Passage
The West Passage
Engravings
Astronomy
Satellites 3 - 5
Satellites 6 - 8
Satellites 9 - 12
Satellites 13 - 15
Satellites 16 - 18

Dowth
The chambers at Dowth
Art at Dowth
Dowth henge

Roman coins found at Newgrange.

The kerbstones and modern vertical quartz wall of Newgrange.

Newgrange

Behold the Sidh before your eyes,
It is manifest to you that it is a king's mansion,
Which was built by the firm Daghda;
It was a wonder, a court, an admirable hill

Newgrange is undoubtedly the best known megalithic monument in Ireland. Along with the other two ancient mounds, Knowth and Dowth, it stands on a low ridge over-looking the River Boyne 8 km east of the town of Drogheda.

Newgrange is a chambered cairn, a 90 meter diameter heap of water-rolled stone with a ring of 97 kerbstones around the base. The mound is roughly heart shaped and probably was originally built in the form of a truncated cone - like Maeve's Cairn, Dowth and Heapstown. There is a reconstruction drawing at the bottom of the next page. The remains of a great circle of standing stones surrounds the mound. It is estimated that if the circle was ever complete there may have been up to 36 stones. Twelve remain today, and there is some doubt as to whether the circle was complete as not all the sockets have been discovered.

Newgrange seen from above in a Bord Failte postcard.

Four smaller satellite mounds, two to the east and two to the west flanked Newgrange; two are buried today, the chamber of one can be seen in the field to the west of Newgrange, and the remains of Cairn Z lie just east of the cairn within the Newgrange enclosure. The missing kerbstones of Site Z have been replaced with concrete pillars. Some of the decorated stones from Cairn Z can be seen in the Passage Grave display in the National Museum in Dublin. Outside the entrance there was a 'setting', discovered during O'Kelly's excavation, and also the remains of what may have been a hut site. In the same compound as Newgrange, and encircling Site Z is the remains of a huge timber henge, approximately the same diameter as the big mound, about 90 meters. Some of the post holes from the henge have been marked with concrete stumps.

A plan of Newgrange.

The site was re-discovered in 1699 when the local landlord, Charles Campbell set his workers removing stones from a convienient mound on his land. By good fortune they began their excavation on the south west side and uncovered an engraved stone - the lintel of the roofbox. Soon they had uncovered the entrance stone, and for the first time since the great mound was constructed people again entered the chamber of Newgrange.

Early visitors to Newgrange. From the book Megalithomania by John Michell.