Prof. William O’Brien

Local Heroes: Ballycommane Gardens – and Bronze Age Site!

This week we were privileged to meet with Andy Stieglitz and Ingolf Jungmann at their home, Ballycommane House, between Durrus and Bantry. We’d been once before, several years ago, when we had met Andy, then busily engaged in renovating one of the sheds. Now the house has been extended and modernised, along with various outbuildings. Andy and Ingolf, both retired and living here full time, are running the house as a bed and breakfast, with an adjacent self-catering cottage, and have opened their garden to the public.

I don’t know the names of most of these flowers, although the one above is from one of their heritage-variety fruit trees

They have taken a few acres of scrubland and pasture – and turned it into a little piece of paradise! Both keen gardeners, they have been working now for fifteen years to develop their arboretum and lay out different areas of the garden connected by meandering paths. Here and there open spaces invite you to lounge and simply take in the sights and the scents.

This Gunnera is, thankfully, the non-invasive variety

Or you can keep strolling and discovering. They specialise in plants from the Azores, where they like to winter, and have discovered that many Azorean species flourish in this mild climate. Of course they have had to learn to deal with the wind, as parts of the site are quite exposed, and with the unpredictable Irish climate.

But Andy and Ingolf value all plants and also celebrate the humble wildflowers that are my special interest. Ingolf has learned to propagate the wild primroses and the colourful borders he has created are a joy.

Wild Primroses are generally pale yellow, but pink varieties also occur. Ingolf tells me the pink ones are a little harder to propagate 

Wild spurges mix with the Azorean ones – the Euphorbia genus is one of the largest and most variable on earth, and while we know it mainly from our wild Spurge varieties they can range from tiny to huge and from colourful (Poinsettias!) to shades of green.

A native Euphorbia (top) is flourishing while below an Azorean import looks very comfortable also. Note the tiny native spurge that has sprung up underneath it – a study in contrasts

Now in March, the garden hasn’t quite come into its own yet. Nevertheless, there is plenty to see and surprising hits of colour here and there. Wherever you look, the eye is caught.

Above: We decided it was an Azorean daisy. Below: I think it’s Green Alkanet, a garden escape that has naturalised widely in Ireland

Ballycommane House is part of the marvellous West Cork Garden Trail and is open from March to October. Andy and Ingolf love to welcome visitors so plan a trip to see this treasure. And when you do, there’s a surprise in store – Ballycommane is also home to a Bronze Age Boulder Burial and Standing Stone Pair!

Andy (left), Ingolf and I contemplate the boulder burial

Regular readers of this blog will know that Robert and I worry about loss of and damage to our ancient monuments due to neglect, lack of knowledge, and occasional wilfulness. That’s why I am calling this post Local Heroes because Andy and Ingolf, quite apart from the enormous work involved in developing their house and garden, have embraced the challenge of celebrating and safeguarding these monuments for all of us.

The Boulder Burial is a large erratic of quartz. Quartz was highly prized in prehistory and was used in various ways. Not surprising, given how it gleams and sparkles in the sun. This one is visible from across the valley

Today was the official unveiling of their Visitor Centre – a converted piggery now in use to display a set of explanatory posters developed by Prof Billy O’Brien and Nick Hogan of UCC. Billy has excavated this site and two other Boulder Burial sites and is more responsible than any other researcher for what we know about the age and possible functions of Boulder Burials. You can read my posts, Boulder Burials: a Misnamed Monument? and Standing Stone Pairs: A Visit to Foherlagh for more about these kinds of monuments.

The standing stone pair is of the local slatey sandstone, chosen to be flat on top – no doubt this served some kind of purpose

Billy was there to do the honours and to give us a talk on the site. When he excavated here in 1989 it rained, he told us, every day of the dig. Although no carbon-datable material turned up he was confident in assigning a mid-to-late Bronze Age date – it’s about 3,000 years old.

Cutting the ribbon to officially open the Visitor Centre

He asked us (there was quite a crowd!) to consider the setting of the boulder burial and standing stone pair in the landscape, and spoke about their use to memorialise high-status individuals and to mark locations from which sunrises and sunsets might be observed at solstices and equinoxes.

Unfortunately tree plantings have obscured the view from the boulder burial, but this is what it looks like. You can see all the way down the Sheep’s Head to Seefin Mountain

Ballycommane is a very special place indeed and we are very fortunate that Andy and Ingolf are committed to being good stewards of the prehistory they have inherited. Thank you, Andy and Ingolf – and for that yummy cake too!

 

 

Wedge Tombs: Last of the Megaliths

Altar Wedge Tomb on The Mizen Peninsula

Altar Wedge Tomb on The Mizen Peninsula

In Ireland, the tradition of building megalithic (mega=large, lithos=stone) structures that included chambers to house the dead (such as the Boyne Valley Passage Grave complex, or the Court Tomb of Creevykeel) belongs to the Neolithic period, which ended around 2500 BC. About this time, a new style emerged of stone ‘galleries’, oriented towards the setting sun. Their distinctive shape – narrower and shorter at the eastern end – gives them their common name, wedge tombs. This tradition appears to have flourished for about 500 years.

Altar, side view

Altar, side view

In other areas of Ireland wedge tombs were often covered by a mound, but there is little evidence for this in West Cork. The closest parallel to wedge tombs outside of Ireland are in Brittany where allées couvertes date from this period. They are associated in some parts of Ireland (although once again not in West Cork) with Beaker pottery, a distinctive kind of vessel widely distributed across Western Europe. This was a time in which the population was expanding, farming practices were intensifying and a brand new technology was being introduced – it was the dawn of the Copper Age. Thus, we can speculate that wedge tombs mark the confluence of two forces: the new continental technologies of pottery and metalworking and the indigenous tradition of erecting megalithic chambered tombs.

Wedge tombs occur mostly in the western half of Ireland, including many in County Clare such as the Parknabinnia tomb pictured below.

Parknabinnia wedge tomb in Co Clare
Parknabinnia, entrance closed by slab

 The largest wedge tomb in Ireland is near Fermoy, north of Cork City. It is typical of many Irish wedge tombs in featuring double walling, evidence of a surrounding cairn, and a sealed end chamber. Interestingly its name, Labbacallee, means the Hag’s Bed – the hag, or wise woman crops up frequently in Irish mythology.

Labbacallee Plan
Labbacallee side elevation

In contrast to Labbacallee, wedge tombs in West Cork are generally smaller and simpler, comprising only one chamber and lacking a covering cairn. However, the distinctive wedge shape is preserved along with one other defining feature: wedge tombs are invariably oriented towards the setting sun. The funerary rite was that of cremation. Votive offerings of white quartz pebbles and small deposits of metal have been found in excavations.

Toormore wedge tomb, now in someone's garden

Toormore wedge tomb, now in someone’s garden

Prof William O’Brien has excavated wedge tombs in West Cork and studied them, and the culture in which they were built, extensively. Here’s what he has to say, in his book, Iverni, about the society that produced them:

Whereas monuments like Newgrange could only have been built with a large organised input of labour over a long period, the building of wedge tombs was undertaken by small kin groups…This was a small scale society, comprised of local, clan-like groupings…The tomb was a type of shrine, sanctified by an association with ancestors and used for periodic offering and sacrifice to supernatural powers.

A striking aspect of Neolithic, Chalcolithic (Copper Age) and Bronze Age monuments in West Cork is their consistent orientation towards solar events such as sunrise and sunsets on the equinoxes, solstices and cross-quarter days (see our post on Bohonagh stone circle, for example). In this regard, wedge tombs are remarkably consistent in being oriented towards the West. Here’s O’Brien again:

Wedge tombs served as funnel-shaped openings to the Otherworld, facing the descending or setting sun to emphasise the symbolic dualism of light/life and darkness/death.

Toormore, side view

Toormore, side view

Looking for a wedge tomb closer to home, we set out yesterday to find the nearby Kilbronogue site, using the information from the National Monuments Service as a guide. We have found in the past that the mapping of sites is not always accurate and after an hour or two of tramping through a large and very muddy area with a helpful neighbour and his son we had to admit defeat – either the map was wrong, or the monument had disappeared in the recent fieldwork by a digger. Desperately hoping it was the former and not the latter, we found out who owned the land and went to call on him today. Stephen Lynch turned out to be a friendly, cheerful and very knowledgeable organic farmer – he assured us that the tomb would never be damaged in any way and not to worry, he would take us to it. Whew! Half an hour later we were trudging up a path that Stephen had had cut through his ash plantation – on we went and suddenly there it was in front of us – a classic wedge tomb, oriented to the west, built with large slabs that may have been cut from the rock face behind it.

Kilbronogue wedge tomb with its guardian, Stephen Lynch

Kilbronogue wedge tomb with its guardian, Stephen Lynch

Stephen told us the tomb had been used as a mass rock in penal times and that the Protestant farmers who owned all the farms that bordered on the rock had cooperated in allowing the masses to take place – an indication, Stephen said, of the long tradition of friendship between Catholic and Protestant farming families in this area. As with the Altar wedge tomb, also used as a mass rock, we marvelled at how a sacred site, built at least four thousand years ago, would retain its aura of veneration over the millennia, to be used again for religious purposes in the historic period.

Kilbronogue, side view

Kilbronogue, side view

Perhaps the most spectacularly situated wedge tomb we have been to is high on a hill overlooking Bantry. This one is known as Queen Medb’s Tomb and from it there are expansive views of the Beara, Sheep’s Head and Mizen Peninsulas. Climb up to it on a clear day, as the sun is sinking into the sea: in the presence of such awe-inspiring scenery you will find yourself contemplating how the mysteries and the wonders of Irish history and prehistory are written on its landscape.

Queen Medb's Tomb

Queen Medb’s Tomb