The small coastal strip between Bremore and Gormonstown is among the most beautiful and unspoiled coastal areas left on the east coast of Ireland. Along the shoreline are a series of Neolithic burial mounds which seem to be connected and may be older than similar mounds on the bend of the Boyne and closely connected to them. It has been claimed that Bremore may be the landing point for the first organized settlers to Ireland, here they lived and buried their dead. Close by are some of the oldest sites we have, including Ballyrothery, Knocknaggin, Four Knocks, New Grange, Dowth, Knowth and of course the Hill of Tara, twenty miles inland where the settlers of Bremore may have later established their sacred center. It is the sort of place most countries would cherish and a picture-post card view of what the world loves about our land, it provides a much needed amenity, it is home to much wildlife and migrating water fowl and its waters are home to rare seal colonies.
However all this may soon be bulldozed to make room for the development of a massive deep water port and the other infrastructure that this will bring.Drogheda Port Company have launched a process to have this port included under the Strategic Infrastructure Act and if they are successful they can use this act to bypass much of the environmental and heritage laws that could protect the area. Early this year when it was pointed out just how rich the area was in archeology the planners moved the centre of the planned port a mile to the north but the area in general seems destined to be developed.
The managing director of Treasury Holdings, the company who plans to build the port, is on record as saying that the heritage “can be worked around”.
However why Drogheda Port needs to expand has not been clarified. The ten state ports in Ireland are all under performing and need aid, industrial production is in free fall, jobs are leaving and our economy may never again reach the heights obtained when this development was first planned. Experts tell us that the world of production will move to Asia and that it is a service and smart economy which will survive here yet the plans for this port proceeds as though the opposite is true.
A Friend of Bremorte now asks you to help!
We wish instead to see an independent study based on the economic now, on the reality of the future, before a development is allowed which will again wreck our history, heritage and environment.
We believe we have a right to our heritage and the sites connected to it. These rights are enshrined in the UN Deceleration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a declaration signed by this present government in 2007.
We believe the proposed development may harm or destroy the environment of this area, including burial complexes of immense age, meaning and value.
It may mean grave desecration, something which is contrary to our culture and beliefs.
We ask you to please get involved and help ensure that the common good prevails and not the good and benefit of the few; a template which has caused so much destruction in Ireland and one which we tax payers have to pay for and which has landed us in the economic and environmental mess we are now in.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/
SaveBremore/http://www.indymedia.ie/openwire?search_text=Bremore
Monday, September 28, 2009
Monday, September 21, 2009
At Bremore.
On Sunday 20th. I went for a long walk along a beach.
I started at Gormonstown and finished at Balbriggan.
I wanted to see for myself if there were any basis to some stories that had been floated, all connected to Bremore and the planned deep water port there.
They were
That there is the remains of a burial mound, partly collapsed onto the beach near the Delvin River, with some of the chamber stones still visible up on the cliff face.
That there are stones and the remains of a burial chamber still visible out on the beach.
That there is a very large burial mound/site/structure yet unrecognised by our monuments people and largely unknown south of Bremore.
I started on the lane across the road at the Huntsman Inn pub which leads down to the sea at Gormonstown. It was on this lane that I seen bulldozers at work in July, on a very large site, work which I felt was connected to the new port. The site is still there, now badly overgrown with ragwort and weeds and two bulldozers sit away in a corner but there does not seem to be any work being done now. The gate was also open.
The next field belongs to the Gormonstown Motorcycle Club and bikes were racing all around it. The lane is badly littered and being used as a litter tip as well as an entrance to the beach. At the lane’s end work has been done on the dunes, they were bulldozed but for what reason I could not say. The beach was largely deserted.
Close to where the Delvin River flows out onto the beach I came to the area where the collapsed mounds are supposed to be. Someone, perhaps seven Prof. Eogan has mentioned this in one article in the Irish Times ??? and rumour has it that a local farmer came and collected some of the fallen stones and still has them in his shed. People are supposed to have seen them and the stones are supposed to be richly decorated.
It is clear that the cliff face has fallen down here, there is evidence of this and a close inspection also shows a few stones still standing up on the cliff face itself. Directly below them area few more lying on the side of the beach. However a few East European men were using them to cook meat on and so me and my camera were made to feel unwelcome. A closer inspection would be needed from both above and below and all I can say now is that there is evidence of serious erosion on the cliff, stones are visible and also on the beach directly below.
About a hundred meters out in the water are two large stones but I doubt if they make up part of a circle or could be what remains of a burial chamber. If someone were to call and look when the tide is out then perhaps clarity could be gained here too.
From there I walked on towards Bremore.
The field in which the mounds sit had been planted with barley, this has now been harvested and so it is easier to see just what is what. However I was very surprised to find a space marked out close to the end of the field and about six hundred meters from the main mound complex. It looks exactly like the three other satellite mounds surrounding the main mound. Local history says that there were five mounds at Bremore making up a cemetery complex. This has been documented as far back as one can go and five mounds are given in all literature that I have read, it was therefore a puzzle to me to find till now only four mounds. Here I believe is the fifth. In a perplexing survey in 1960 Ryann came to the conclusion that there were five mounds but that they were all under the main mound and this lunacy has since held sway. The main mound is the one closest to the beach, the others are at varying lengths away from it. All of them have a circular or oblong shape with a line of large stones at there base. Can one not assume the reason they look smaller today is because the gravel, stones and clay used to build them has since been taken away? All burial mounds that I have seen are of the same design. A passage leads into a central area which is always Kreutzform and with the entire structure set below the surface, the standing stones that make it up coming up to ground level. From there they are/were covered and heaped over with soil and stones making up a mound. If farmers had a need for gravel and stone, as they had over the last six thousand years, would it not be safe to assume that they removed what was already above ground, i.e. the mounds. The nearest ones to the roads old, paths etc were always first to be removed and the ones furthest away last. Is this why the mound close to the beach is left as it was. I think this is the story of Bremore and I feel it urgent now for a proper archaeological investigation to take place here and that all five structures be examined. There are five mounds documented and I believe now that five remain.
A local woman I met told me that the field was bought by Treasury Holdings in 2007 and they marked out the site with red flags. If so and if Treasury are bust (see my other posting) then it may mean Nama will soon own the site, i.e. us taxpayers will own the land at Bremore. If so should we allow it be sold again? This must be worked on now.
It should be noted too that care was taken with the harvesting and the mounds, all five of them, were not damaged in any way. Our agitation was not in vain.
Further south and towards Balbriggan I came across a cairn, know locally as “the sailor’s grave”. It is old but new stones have being placed upon it, many with people’s names written on them.
Then about a mile south of Bremore and practically on the coast I came upon a site, fenced off and left wild. It looks like a carbon copy of Bremore, much larger and rising about five meters but covered in scrub. I tried its interior but I did not get very far in, it is full of Whitethorn bushes, alive with wildlife and so impossible to tell what it really is. Nobody I asked even knew of its existence. It may be a fenced off farmers spoil heap, an old fishing site or a very ancient burial site. However just a mile from Bremore and looking like it does it needs urgent-urgent investigation too.
Closer to Ballybriggan I seen the remains of cliff cottages, supposingly fishermen’s homes of long ago now falling into the sea. Children were born here, played on the beach and slept warm and safe in their beds as the storms raged just outside their doors. Why the last traces of these very early houses are not protected I do not know.
Most people I met on the beach were foreigners and at best dimly aware of where they were.
The Irish, with the exception of one lady, just did not know nor care. About plans for the beach, port, history, heritage? No! It is as if their environment, past and future are not important, not theirs, but for sale for a simple job.
Balbriggan has turned black and leaving race out of it I cannot see how we have benefit from this invasion. How can it enhance us to have a brown population growing at an alarming rate and relying for their future on a collapsing social welfare system and on an economy that has been built on sand? The tiny black faces looking out of the ever present prams will hardly care about our culture or Bremore either, when we ourselves will not.
Thank God for the recession.
I started at Gormonstown and finished at Balbriggan.
I wanted to see for myself if there were any basis to some stories that had been floated, all connected to Bremore and the planned deep water port there.
They were
That there is the remains of a burial mound, partly collapsed onto the beach near the Delvin River, with some of the chamber stones still visible up on the cliff face.
That there are stones and the remains of a burial chamber still visible out on the beach.
That there is a very large burial mound/site/structure yet unrecognised by our monuments people and largely unknown south of Bremore.
I started on the lane across the road at the Huntsman Inn pub which leads down to the sea at Gormonstown. It was on this lane that I seen bulldozers at work in July, on a very large site, work which I felt was connected to the new port. The site is still there, now badly overgrown with ragwort and weeds and two bulldozers sit away in a corner but there does not seem to be any work being done now. The gate was also open.
The next field belongs to the Gormonstown Motorcycle Club and bikes were racing all around it. The lane is badly littered and being used as a litter tip as well as an entrance to the beach. At the lane’s end work has been done on the dunes, they were bulldozed but for what reason I could not say. The beach was largely deserted.
Close to where the Delvin River flows out onto the beach I came to the area where the collapsed mounds are supposed to be. Someone, perhaps seven Prof. Eogan has mentioned this in one article in the Irish Times ??? and rumour has it that a local farmer came and collected some of the fallen stones and still has them in his shed. People are supposed to have seen them and the stones are supposed to be richly decorated.
It is clear that the cliff face has fallen down here, there is evidence of this and a close inspection also shows a few stones still standing up on the cliff face itself. Directly below them area few more lying on the side of the beach. However a few East European men were using them to cook meat on and so me and my camera were made to feel unwelcome. A closer inspection would be needed from both above and below and all I can say now is that there is evidence of serious erosion on the cliff, stones are visible and also on the beach directly below.
About a hundred meters out in the water are two large stones but I doubt if they make up part of a circle or could be what remains of a burial chamber. If someone were to call and look when the tide is out then perhaps clarity could be gained here too.
From there I walked on towards Bremore.
The field in which the mounds sit had been planted with barley, this has now been harvested and so it is easier to see just what is what. However I was very surprised to find a space marked out close to the end of the field and about six hundred meters from the main mound complex. It looks exactly like the three other satellite mounds surrounding the main mound. Local history says that there were five mounds at Bremore making up a cemetery complex. This has been documented as far back as one can go and five mounds are given in all literature that I have read, it was therefore a puzzle to me to find till now only four mounds. Here I believe is the fifth. In a perplexing survey in 1960 Ryann came to the conclusion that there were five mounds but that they were all under the main mound and this lunacy has since held sway. The main mound is the one closest to the beach, the others are at varying lengths away from it. All of them have a circular or oblong shape with a line of large stones at there base. Can one not assume the reason they look smaller today is because the gravel, stones and clay used to build them has since been taken away? All burial mounds that I have seen are of the same design. A passage leads into a central area which is always Kreutzform and with the entire structure set below the surface, the standing stones that make it up coming up to ground level. From there they are/were covered and heaped over with soil and stones making up a mound. If farmers had a need for gravel and stone, as they had over the last six thousand years, would it not be safe to assume that they removed what was already above ground, i.e. the mounds. The nearest ones to the roads old, paths etc were always first to be removed and the ones furthest away last. Is this why the mound close to the beach is left as it was. I think this is the story of Bremore and I feel it urgent now for a proper archaeological investigation to take place here and that all five structures be examined. There are five mounds documented and I believe now that five remain.
A local woman I met told me that the field was bought by Treasury Holdings in 2007 and they marked out the site with red flags. If so and if Treasury are bust (see my other posting) then it may mean Nama will soon own the site, i.e. us taxpayers will own the land at Bremore. If so should we allow it be sold again? This must be worked on now.
It should be noted too that care was taken with the harvesting and the mounds, all five of them, were not damaged in any way. Our agitation was not in vain.
Further south and towards Balbriggan I came across a cairn, know locally as “the sailor’s grave”. It is old but new stones have being placed upon it, many with people’s names written on them.
Then about a mile south of Bremore and practically on the coast I came upon a site, fenced off and left wild. It looks like a carbon copy of Bremore, much larger and rising about five meters but covered in scrub. I tried its interior but I did not get very far in, it is full of Whitethorn bushes, alive with wildlife and so impossible to tell what it really is. Nobody I asked even knew of its existence. It may be a fenced off farmers spoil heap, an old fishing site or a very ancient burial site. However just a mile from Bremore and looking like it does it needs urgent-urgent investigation too.
Closer to Ballybriggan I seen the remains of cliff cottages, supposingly fishermen’s homes of long ago now falling into the sea. Children were born here, played on the beach and slept warm and safe in their beds as the storms raged just outside their doors. Why the last traces of these very early houses are not protected I do not know.
Most people I met on the beach were foreigners and at best dimly aware of where they were.
The Irish, with the exception of one lady, just did not know nor care. About plans for the beach, port, history, heritage? No! It is as if their environment, past and future are not important, not theirs, but for sale for a simple job.
Balbriggan has turned black and leaving race out of it I cannot see how we have benefit from this invasion. How can it enhance us to have a brown population growing at an alarming rate and relying for their future on a collapsing social welfare system and on an economy that has been built on sand? The tiny black faces looking out of the ever present prams will hardly care about our culture or Bremore either, when we ourselves will not.
Thank God for the recession.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Bremore For Me.
Take a small country like Ireland, in depth, with a sinking economy, its people been asked to shoulder the burden of what a small poisoned elite created and a bill looming before us to undo this, a bill which dwarfs anything our future can pay for.
A land with eleven ports all of which are at present operating under capacity, many of whom are so starved of cash that they crumbled and fall into the sea and all of them looking to government for a plan of existence.
So what does our government do?
It plans to build a new, super all inclusive and centralised port at Bremore, wrecking as it does this the environment of the entire area, wrecking the recognised burial places of our first ancestors, wrecking the job prospects of the Dublin Port workers and wrecking the hopes that the smaller ports around Ireland had clung to; the hope that one day our government would decentralise shipping and finally put into place smaller specialised ports leading to a safe, ecofriendly and sustainable industry.
A land with eleven ports all of which are at present operating under capacity, many of whom are so starved of cash that they crumbled and fall into the sea and all of them looking to government for a plan of existence.
So what does our government do?
It plans to build a new, super all inclusive and centralised port at Bremore, wrecking as it does this the environment of the entire area, wrecking the recognised burial places of our first ancestors, wrecking the job prospects of the Dublin Port workers and wrecking the hopes that the smaller ports around Ireland had clung to; the hope that one day our government would decentralise shipping and finally put into place smaller specialised ports leading to a safe, ecofriendly and sustainable industry.
Monday, September 7, 2009
Rain.
I lay awake last night listening to the hammering rain. A fool can see that our earth is deeply ill, just look at the rain that is falling. The fields are water logged, crops are rotting in the fields, the farmers associations are saying that we may have to give up planting corn etc, every expert worth their salt is pressing warning buttons and flashing the red lights yet in Paddyland we build, build, build.
It’s as if we live on another planet, in a parallel universe where no such problems exist.
I will say again; global warming causes more water to evaporate at the tropics, this water is then carried as clouds and falls as rain in the temperate zones. Its not rocket science, watch a kettle boil. It rises as steam in a cloud then as it cools it falls as condensation.
This is the system of hydrology working as always and as it always will. Global warming can only mean for us in the northern hemisphere and on an Island more and more and more rain. That will undo us.
It’s as if we live on another planet, in a parallel universe where no such problems exist.
I will say again; global warming causes more water to evaporate at the tropics, this water is then carried as clouds and falls as rain in the temperate zones. Its not rocket science, watch a kettle boil. It rises as steam in a cloud then as it cools it falls as condensation.
This is the system of hydrology working as always and as it always will. Global warming can only mean for us in the northern hemisphere and on an Island more and more and more rain. That will undo us.
Possible
Last Spring I watched Fingal CoCo search for a leak in a sewerage pipe. They had a small machine like a children’s toy which was made from steel, with steel wheels, it had a tiny digital camera with lights attached to it and it was guided from a monitor on a truck by wires. It was sent a hundred meters up a pipe, crawling its way to where it found the leak, photographed it and then from the truck the point was marked and made ready for repair.
If they can use these machines for sewerage pipes why can’t they do likewise with burial mounds? Bremore they tell us is a possible burial cemetery; we know that it is a very, very old one and one that may be a sort of mothership for all that was to come at Tara/The Boyne valley/Brega, yet no one at Fingal CoCo seem to consider it worth even study.
Tens of thousands can be spent marking out possible sites for development but not a penny can be found for heritage, environmental protection or history. However if we really are that broke, if we really can’t afford normal non invasive archaeological equipment could we not borrow and make do with that machine mentioned above. Even for a week!
It would be perfectly possible to bore a small opening into the side of the main mounds at Bremore, Knocknagin etc, 100cm in diameter and feed the machine in, then move it around the interior, photographing what is there and thus finally documenting it for further interest or study. When finished the opening could be closed by blowing a mix of clay and powered cement into it, the moisture in the soil would cause the cement to expand and set and so the tomb would again be sealed, if necessary forever.
That is just one small but obtainable and cheep solution. If successful our heritage department could then buy just one of these machines and use it all across our land, they could examine ten sites per year and reach definite conclusions on them, on us and our past. The strange mystical beauty of our ancient art, artifacts etc could be made available to our children in photo form instead of leaving them to the destruction of gravediggers, road builders or farmers tractors which is now happening with increasing regularity. Could do, will do? No.
Bulldozers
I make no apologies for the fact that I am anti development, we have enough sites, factories shopping centers and ports lying idle that will do for the next three incarnations, we are now being forced to pay for them and so we need further development like we need cancer.
I also know that having planned a port at Bremore it will go ahead.
Remember there is an orbital road planned too, which will link in with it, the planning laws are soon to be changed, it used to be a five year planning application, if the development was not complete in five years then the permission was null and void, now they are going to amend that to having a planning application open for much longer, up to fifteen years maybe, so regardless how long it takes they will despoil that coast.
It is as if devils are driving them to do it. Don’t relax regardless of what the Greens or their hugging friends say, money has already moved in at Bremore, the bulldozers are next.
If they can use these machines for sewerage pipes why can’t they do likewise with burial mounds? Bremore they tell us is a possible burial cemetery; we know that it is a very, very old one and one that may be a sort of mothership for all that was to come at Tara/The Boyne valley/Brega, yet no one at Fingal CoCo seem to consider it worth even study.
Tens of thousands can be spent marking out possible sites for development but not a penny can be found for heritage, environmental protection or history. However if we really are that broke, if we really can’t afford normal non invasive archaeological equipment could we not borrow and make do with that machine mentioned above. Even for a week!
It would be perfectly possible to bore a small opening into the side of the main mounds at Bremore, Knocknagin etc, 100cm in diameter and feed the machine in, then move it around the interior, photographing what is there and thus finally documenting it for further interest or study. When finished the opening could be closed by blowing a mix of clay and powered cement into it, the moisture in the soil would cause the cement to expand and set and so the tomb would again be sealed, if necessary forever.
That is just one small but obtainable and cheep solution. If successful our heritage department could then buy just one of these machines and use it all across our land, they could examine ten sites per year and reach definite conclusions on them, on us and our past. The strange mystical beauty of our ancient art, artifacts etc could be made available to our children in photo form instead of leaving them to the destruction of gravediggers, road builders or farmers tractors which is now happening with increasing regularity. Could do, will do? No.
Bulldozers
I make no apologies for the fact that I am anti development, we have enough sites, factories shopping centers and ports lying idle that will do for the next three incarnations, we are now being forced to pay for them and so we need further development like we need cancer.
I also know that having planned a port at Bremore it will go ahead.
Remember there is an orbital road planned too, which will link in with it, the planning laws are soon to be changed, it used to be a five year planning application, if the development was not complete in five years then the permission was null and void, now they are going to amend that to having a planning application open for much longer, up to fifteen years maybe, so regardless how long it takes they will despoil that coast.
It is as if devils are driving them to do it. Don’t relax regardless of what the Greens or their hugging friends say, money has already moved in at Bremore, the bulldozers are next.
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Objection Template.
I the undersigned wish to lodge an objection to the plans by Drogheda Port to develop a new port at Bremore, Co Dublin.
I believe that we have a right to our heritage and the sites connected to it, and to the sites connected to our history and mythology. I believe that our government must safeguard and protect these sites from damage and harm.
These rights are enshrined in the UN Deceleration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a declaration signed by this present government in 2007.
The proposed development at Bremore may harm or destroy sites and burial complexes of immense age, meaning and value. It may mean grave desecration, something which runs contrary to our culture and our beliefs. I object to this.
The proposed development will cause damage, harm and destruction to the ecology and environment on the coast at Bremore. I object to this.
The proposed development will rob Irish people living on the east coast of a much needed and valued recreational area. I object to this.
Signed
I believe that we have a right to our heritage and the sites connected to it, and to the sites connected to our history and mythology. I believe that our government must safeguard and protect these sites from damage and harm.
These rights are enshrined in the UN Deceleration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a declaration signed by this present government in 2007.
The proposed development at Bremore may harm or destroy sites and burial complexes of immense age, meaning and value. It may mean grave desecration, something which runs contrary to our culture and our beliefs. I object to this.
The proposed development will cause damage, harm and destruction to the ecology and environment on the coast at Bremore. I object to this.
The proposed development will rob Irish people living on the east coast of a much needed and valued recreational area. I object to this.
Signed
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