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.