Heritage park

Historic Thatch consultants

Heritage Council Conservation Panel

The Heritage Council regularly requires the service of conservation professionals in a wide range of disciplines. Council maintains several panels of conservation specialists and is now seeking to renew and expand the Historic Thatch panel. The purpose of this panel is to allow the Council to award small-scale, short duration contracts for the inspection or reporting on heritage assets. Council is seeking heritage expertise in the area of Historic Thatch.

A panel of Historic Thatch consultants was assembled by the Heritage Council in 2009.  Accordingly, current Historic Thatch panellists are asked to re-apply and the panel is also open to new applications.

The closing date for receipt of applications is 5.00pm on Wednesday 29th February 2012.

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From BBC News

The remains of a 300-year-old warship are to be raised from the sea bed, according to reports.

The wreck of HMS Victory, a predecessor of Nelson’s famous flagship, was found near the Channel Islands in 2008. The British warship, which went down in a storm in 1744 killing more than 1,000 sailors, could contain gold coins worth an estimated £500m.

The Sunday Times says the Maritime Heritage Foundation is set to manage the wreck’s raising. It also reports that the charity will employ Odyssey Marine Exploration to carry out the recovery.

The American company found the ship four years ago, with the ship’s identity confirmed by a bronze cannon.

The guns and other reclaimed artefacts will be displayed in British museums, however under the laws of salvage, Odyssey is likely to receive the bulk of any treasure found, according to the newspaper.

A Ministry of Defence spokeswoman said: “Efforts to protect key parts of British Naval history such as the wreck of HMS Victory 1744 are very welcome and we hope to make an announcement shortly.”

The chairman of the foundation, Lord Lingfield, is a relative of Admiral Sir John Balchin, who was onboard the warship when it sank. The Tory peer, formerly known as Sir Robert Balchin, told the newspaper that he would not profit from the ship’s cargo.

He added: “We will have the satisfaction of solving a great maritime mystery that has been part of my family history since the 18th Century.”

The 300ft (90m) ship was discovered by the Florida-based firm in May 2008, nearly 65 miles (100km) from where it was historically believed to have sunk.
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Irish Times Magazine January 2012

THERE CAN’T BE a person in the country who doesn’t know the location of at least one fairy fort, the mysterious circular landmarks left untouched by superstitious farmers.

Such is the power of the lore behind them that at least one well-known property developer (rhymes with bin) has had his current woes attributed to interfering with one.

In fact our beloved fairy forts are simply the last vestiges of the thousands of ring forts that dotted the landscape in the fifth and sixth centuries.

Typically made up of a farmhouse plus a patch for grazing, they were surrounded by a wooden palisade fence with pointy tips to fend off cattle raids, the national pastime of the day.

In time the ring fort tradition died out, people built bungalows followed by ghost estates, and the rest is architectural history.

Except that the wooden palisades around the ring forts, being organic, rotted into the ground and fertilised the strange circles we see today. As the ring forts were forgotten, the circles were attributed to fairies.

I’m pretty sure I was taught all this at school but it was only on a recent visit to the Irish National Heritage Park in Wexford that I learned it, as a result of one of its fantastic guided tours.

The park, which has replicas of all sorts of native dwellings down through the ages, has a magnificent ring fort which is being revamped with the subtle inclusion of “all mod cons”. This is because, from this summer on, holiday makers looking for unusual accommodation in Wexford will have the opportunity to stay in it, re-enacting the Táin Bó Cúailnge to their heart’s content.

Niche Travel by SANDRA O’CONNELL Article From Irish Times Magazine January 2012

Fiadhna lying alive, but stunned, on a boulder next to the Bridal Path, Glenveagh National Park, 8th January 2012

An extraordinary incident took place  on Sunday 8^th January 2012. A group of walkers got a huge shock when a rare White-tailed eagle fell from the sky and crash-landed beside them at Glenveagh National Park.

The walkers were traveling along the popular Bridal Path when the bizarre incident happened on Sunday last.

The bird, one which was reintroduced to Ireland as part of a breeding programme, crashed through trees and landed on a large boulder beside the group.

The bird, known as Fiadhna, had the letter F on its back as well as a satellite antenna when it fell close to an area known as the Long Hollow. It landed on a large moss covered granite boulder.  The walkers able to walk close to the bird and take the above photograph.  Though the picture is somewhat fuzzy, due to excitement, you can see the white plastic tag on the right wing and the green colour bar at its base– denoting a green wing tag on the left wing.  The letter F is reasonably distinct.  Its Satellite tag and short antenna is visible on its back also.

Rangers knew the bird was in the area but its solar antenna had ceased working and it had been thought she had been killed.

Now it’s thought its solar antenna’s battery had simply gone flat because of the lack of sunshine.

The walkers from Derry managed to snatch a picture of the bird before running for help more than a mile away at Glenveagh Castle.

Pat Vaughan of the National Parks and Wildlife Trust rushed to the scene and despite getting there just half an hour after the crash-landing, Fiadhna was gone.

A group of rangers carried out a full search of scrubland around the area but there was no sign of the majestic bird which has been tracked to many counties including Kilkenny, Clare, Galway, Louth, Kerry and Tipperary.

Lorcan O’Toole of the Golden Eagle Trust said he thinks a pair of Golden Eagles which are living in the area may have attacked Fiadhna.

“The only reasonable guess we have is that the White-tailed Eagle was simply dive bombed by a territorial Golden Eagle and struck in mid air, by closed talons and fell to the ground as a result.

“This may account for the commotion heard overhead, but not seen, before the eagle crashed through the treetops,” he said.

Mr O’Toole said it was encouraging that the ancient competition between White-tailed Eagles and Golden Eagles is once again playing itself out above the Mountains and Loughs of Ireland.

Prehistoric children as young as three were encouraged by adults to make cave art 13,000 years ago, new research shows.

The Cambridge University study sheds new light on the lives of children and the ancient art they made during the prehistoric hunter gatherer period in the French caverns at Rouffignac, known as the Cave of a Hundred Mammoths.

Fascinating fieldword has been undertaken by Cambridge archaeologiest Jess Cooney in one of the most famous prehistoric decorated caves in France-the complex of caverns at Rouffignac-Saint-Cernin-de-Reilhac, about 20Km from the perhaps better- know Lascaux in Perigord.

At a recent conference on the Archaelogoy of Childhood at the University of Cambridge, Ms Cooney described how, by examining the size of the fingers that made the doodles ( called ‘finger flutings’ in professional circles) in the daub  on the cave’s roof, she was able to ascertain the age and gender of the doodlers who made thes simple art forms around 13,000 years ago during the Upper Palaeolithic.

“We have found marks by children aged between three and seven years old — and we have been able to identify four individual children by matching up their marks,” said Cambridge University archaeologist Jess Cooney.

Her work reveals, that some of the flutings studied were made by a three-year-old child but that the most prolific young artist was a girl of five. Archaeologists first realised that children had produced some of the finger flutings back in 2006; fieldwork carried out earlier this year by Cooney, a Gates Scholar at Cambridge, and Dr Leslie Van Gelder of Walden University, USA, shows just how young they were. The story repays two readings, one from CNN and other from the University of Cambridge research site.

Edited from Archaeology Ireland Magazine Winter 2011 by Eoin Bairead

Photo: The bone remains found inside a Megalithic burial urn excavated near Ramakkalmedu in Idukki district. There are a large number of Megalithic sites in the district which need scientific protection. Photo: Special Arrangement.

A burial urn, locally known as a nannangady and believed to date back to the megalithic era (1500 BCE -100 CE), was recently excavated from a construction site near Ramakkalmedu in Idukki district (Kerala, India). The discovery may throw light on the possibility of carbon dating for further studies as there were bone remains found inside the ancient urn.
The nannangadi is about one metre high and its opening has a diameter of about 12 inches. The top of the urn was covered with a round shaped stone slab. Two small pots and a bowl having a diameter of about 8 inches were placed near the urn. Inside the urn, a human bone was found.
“The red and black pottery is remarkable as it denotes the Dravidian expansion to South India,” Mr T. Rajesh, historian, who led the excavation said. It is the first that a human bone was fond in a nannangadi, and these remains will allow scientists to date the burial urn, he added.
Dr P.J. Cherian, director of the Kerala Council for Historical Research, said that the excavation had opened the windows for further study of the valuable historical remains in Idukki district. The local administration has drawn up a project ‘Discovering Idukki,’ in its annual budget for 2011-2012 to protect the megalithic sites and start studies of those monuments. It also plans to open a megalithic museum at the district headquarters in Painavu for collection and preservation of the historical remains excavated in the district.

Edited from The Hindu (30 December 2011)