Save Tara - motorway threatens premier Irish site

The Hill of Tara, one of the most extensive, complex, important, and informative archaeological, historical, folkloric, and religious sites in Ireland is under dire threat from a motorway development. Want to know more and to do something? Then read on - I posted the following to the NWI forum on July 14th 2007 (in the Lounge):

The following blog is exhaustive in its coverage of this issue: http://www.hilloftara.blogspot.com/
This now seems to be the main website for the campaign.

People can also sign the petition you mentioned from there, join the Tarawatch mailing list, and watch/listen to numerous clips of RTE and other coverage. The blog is an education in itself as it goes into every imaginable aspect of this issue.

There was a BBC programme on the threat to ancient sites in the present rush to develop every corner of Ireland at some point in the last couple of years. I have been very busy and not always as attentive as I ought, and so my memory fails me - it could have been on Radio 4 or equally on TV - I am not able to swear that the sounds and images in my brain go together in this case. I will try to find relevant links and post them here. There are two links to BBC reports on the above blog in fact.

I will now take off my MWI Forum Moderator and Archival Officer hats and speak my own mind. On my part I agree that Ireland deserves to be as developed as the rest of western Europe and am delighted to see how her people are currently benefitting from this. However, I feel strongly that the rich ancient heritage of that country and its people should not be sacrificed in this process as places like Tara are in their own special and significant way part of this process of restoration to past greatness. Also, I think that it is essential that such sites should be preserved for scholarly and scientific purposes.

Tara is also of Christian and non-Christian religious significance, like many Irish sites now under threat and so it would be crassly insensitive to endanger it with development.

In my opinion, and to conclude, Ireland is not the pastoral idyll or mist-softened otherworld of a hundred thousand stereotypes, and never was, and so modernisation there is in many ways right and proper, BUT, it must be done responsibly and it is good to do our bit to ensure that this happens. All too often, Irish government policy mirrors that of the UK and so the same mistakes are replicated.

Some essential links.

Sláine

This extremely comprehensive site provides a comprehensive index of Holy Wells in Ireland: http://www.slaine.ie/

The county by county breakdown, under the heading 'Find a Well' at the bottom left, is very convenient and useful.


Megalithic Portal

This site has a searchable database of Holy Wells and Sacred Springs in the UK, with over 600 entries. Approximately 450 of these have pictures. Click here to find a well or spring in your county.

St Ethelburga's Well, Lyminge, Kent

NGR: TR161408


Go to google maps for a good aerial view. Just type in Lyminge as the green arrow appears in the centre of the crossroads to the NNW of the site. Follow the road down through right of picture to the SSE and you will find a thin path leading to a square structure on the right side of the road. The church is clearly visible on the other side of the road, to the SSW of the well.

I have visited this site only once in passing and stopped there only for approximately twenty minutes. Without any background knowledge I am therefore only able to post observations unsupported as yet by research.

The village website, Lyminge online, (http://www.lyminge.org.uk/backissues
/sep98.html) states that the well celebrated its centenary in September 1998, for which extensive restoration work was carried out. Presumably, as the village Church, dedicated to St Mary and St Ethelburga has fabric extant from the tenth century, and as St Ethelburga was the seventh century wife of King Edwin of Northumbria (http://www.earlybritishkingdoms.com/adversaries/bios/
ethelburgalyming.html), this was the centenary of the construction of the Victorian drinking water pump on top of the holy well and perhaps an indicator of its lack of religious significance in the nineteenth century.

The Church is nearby, approximately three to five minute's walk, at the centre of the village, at the highest point, and is adjacent to once of the many Archbishop's palaces in Kent. The well lies on the spring line at the base of this higher ground. The church is located to the west-south-west of the well.

The well is located on a bend in the main road through the village and is on the right side if once approaches from Folkestone, that is approximately from the SSE. Unfortunately, the Victorian water pump, or 'wellhead' as the village website hopefully puts it in an attempt to find some redeeming feature in an excrescence of the industrial age, almost completely hides the well itself and the bars which prevent access to the water prevent the visitor from properly viewing or photographing the earlier structure. The glowering and oppressive pump house also prevents any light from reaching the well which is consequently foetid, stagnant, and malodorous. As this wholly secular structure is neither rare, being no more than a commonplace drinking water pump built in a workaday and functional style is both hideously ugly and has completely hidden the holy well beneath it is difficult to understand why the villagers wished to celebrate its centenary and why they did not instead tear it down and restore the holy well in order to make a far more agreeable and genuinely historical tourist attraction/sacred site.

It is also important to note that the well is the source of the Nailbourne River, which becomes the Little Stour at Littlebourne, and which eventually flows into the Great Stour, the river that flows through Canterbury . Between Elham and Bishopsbourne, this river flows underground for most of the year and can disappear for several years in dry conditions. The creation of the well is attributed to Augustine of Canterbury in local folklore who was said to struck his staff on drought stricken land in order to make water flow and deter the locals from the worship of Woden and Thor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nailbourne). It seems most probable that the periodic disappearance of the river postdates its usage for drinking water, with over abstraction in times of drought bearing consequences further downstream.

This site may have been restored in 1997 but shows little evidence of attention since that date. The pump house is filled with litter and debris from the road, while the base, where the well can be seen through iron bars, is overgrown with nettles. The red-brick outer or rear wall of the structure, away from the road, facing ENE, has been tagged by a graffitist.

The open area to the ENE of the well is a recreation ground, called Tayne Field. At the far side of this there is an extremely clear and clean-looking stream with a gravelly/sandy bed across which stepping stones afford a crossing. It is impossible to date these by casual observation. The notion that they once provided pilgrims with access to the well is certainly not unfeasible especially when the proximity of the Saxon Church and Archbishop's palace are taken into account. There are numerous tracks in this area which are said to have been used by Pilgrims.

This site is certainly worth some serious research and I shall undertake this as soon as possible. I believe that documenting the history of this site thoroughly to increase usefulness of its value might lend weight to a campaign to have something done to have is maintained better and maybe to have the holy well somehow made plainly visible and distinct from the Victorian drinking water pump - even if this can be done by somehow leaving the latter standing, as it is a perverse source of local pride.

* Yes I know that I cited Wikipedia in an academic context. Deal with it.