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.
The Way In.
