Knockroe Passage Tomb, county Kilkenny

Knockroe Passage Tomb, Co Kilkenny

The Winter Solstice this year is on Friday 21st December: Sunrise 08.38am & Sunset 16.07pm. 

Knockroe is located in the Civil Parish of Tullahought,county Kilkenny and is 4km south of Windgap.   It is a small townland of about 118 acres and gives its name to the Passage tomb area but local people also refer to it as the Caiseal or Coshel.   It is  very near both Ahenny graveyard, county Tipperary and Kilkieran graveyard which we surveyed earlier this year and which have 8th century Celtic crosses.  The area is also known for its slate quarries which have been in operation since the 16th century.  In the 19th century the quarries operated on a commercial footing with the Ormonde Quarries on the Kilkenny side of the Linguan river, and the Victoria Slate Quarries operating on the Tipperary side.

The small  river of Linguan is the boundary line today between the Provinces of Munster and Leinster and Tipperary and Kilkenny,  a boundary which would surely amuse our Neolithic ancestors. The Lingaun river has its source at Slievenamon, county Tipperary and flows beneath the Neolithic monument in a diagonal pathway southwards until it enters the larger river Suir at Carrick-on-Suir; here the Suir is tidal.

 

Knockroe Passage Tomb is under the care of The Office of Public Works which is responsible for all National Monuments in state ownership.

The site actually consists of two tombs, one opening off to the east and the other to the  west; one aligned to the rising sun and the other to the setting sun at the winter solstice. You might wonder how our Neolithic stone age ancestors about 3000 B.C were able to erect such monuments, working with impliments in a flint and stone culture, and that how 5000 years later their work continues to add a significant dimension to our lives in Kilkenny and the Suir Valley.  Prior to the 1980s, this monument, central to Neolithic culture, was virtually unknown or at least ignored, but it is now visited by streams of people, at the Winter Solstice the shortest day of the year, to experience the rays of the rising and setting sun passing through the tombs.   The Knockroe Passage Tombs present, a tangible and wonderous display as the Eastern Passage Tomb is illuminated by the rising sun on Friday 21st December. That same evening, the setting sun again illuminates the Western Passage Tomb on the 21st of December at the Winter Solstice. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sEQY_fZp-xI
Click on this link to see the light entering, illuminating and exiting the Western tomb at Knockroe 

 

Professor Muiris O Sullivan of the Department of Archaeology, University College, Dublin, has worked on excavating this site since the mid 1980s and identified the art work panels on the passage tomb.  There are some 30 decorated stones, some with incised concentric circles. Some of the art work is very similar to decorated stones found at Gavrinis, in Britanny, France.  Gavrinis, or the Island of Goats at Morbihan. is inaccessible for many months of the year but Professor O Sullivan made the link with Knockroe, not only because of the decoration but the also the positioning and choice of the stones at this site in France  The significance of this is still unfolding.   Several stones here at Knockroe show similarities with decorated stones at Newgrange and particularly Knowth in the Boyne Valley complex which is now designated a World Heritage Site.   Knockroe is thought to be older than Newgrange and is also thought to be older than Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England.  Knockroe also predates the Pyramids in Egypt.

The stones were all sourced locally.  The tombs were used for burial but it is unclear if the eastern tomb remained accessible following its use for burial.  The larger west tomb or chamber originally supported two capstones which covered the tomb with access restricted through a narrow opening.   The positioning of Knockroe is interesting as it is one of a group of cairns in the region, some of which are aligned with a large mound on the top of Slievenamon, county Tipperary and they were also visible from one to the other.  Obviously our Neolithic ancestors had other skills apart from rock and stone carving.
Carrigan (1905) stated that the "Coshel" and its immediate surroundings evidently served as a ancient pre-Christian cemetery.  The field adjoining the site to the south is called in Irish "log-lushkina" meaning the Hollow of the Burnt Land; he stated that it contained a great deal of black earth as if once used as an ancient graveyard.

Cup marks carved onto an upright stone.

The setting Sun over Clashnasmut

The winter solstice now attracts a great crowd of people from every walk of life taking light relief from the commercial calendar, and local people who are proud of their heritage.  The winter solstice is quite a colourful event with the presence of druidic people.  Music often accompanies this wonderful spectacle with the strings of a lone harpist or sometimes the haunting melody of a flute.  You will arrive to a welcome of hot fruit punch and mince pies.

The crowd has parted waiting for the rays of the sun to stream through to the tomb.

Worth waiting for