Newgrange - Boyne Currach Centre

Newgrange Currach

So the rolling green hills sweeping down from Newgrange to the river below, would have been so different 5,000 years ago! Instead the south bank, with its back to the sun, a wash with streams and marshy bogs, it would have been dense with forestry of Hazel and Ash.

 

The frame of the long Newgrange currach.

 

Two rivers joined in the basin, the Boyne and the Lougher, directly below Newgrange. And this is where I found sea-shells when I first moved into the area, exposed by the river waters over 5 feet down in the steep bank on bits of black stick, they were the size of your finger nail, and there were lines of packed shells in the bank of the river itself. What also surprised me was the amount of sea birds and migrant birds that winter here and the ability of the seal to hunt the salmon so far above the present tide line.
It is here where the hazel Currach's ancestors of the local Currach delivered the quartz from Wicklow and the flint from Armagh. Great reed rafts carried by the tides, finally rested here with great rocks of gray wacky stones delivered from Clogherhead only to be pulled on rollers to the giant tombs above.
The closest I got to it was making a Boyne Currach from the valley hazel, which is scarce now but no doubt, the rough escarpment of the south side opposite Brú na Bóinne was a forest of such woods. Fleshing and curing the hides, I sowed them on and this opened my thoughts and me to the real valley. Even the ground looks like those of the flats of Wexford and other old seashores.

Now with 25 Boyne Currachs back on the River Boyne it is time to take the 'Imrámh' further. Using the exact same technique as the Boyne Currach, sticking the rods into the ground and weaving from the inside out and upside down, this Currach, the 'Newgrange' or 'Brú', must take nine men, eight on oars and one on rudder; just like the earliest written voyagers, Imrámh Bran! I walked out 23 foot, 4 foot apart for seats. When I spoke to Séamas Mac Philip, from the National Museum, about my project, he sent me a drawing of the largest Currach in Ireland, the Achil 8-man Currach, the same size as I had estimated!

Click here to see the stages of building the frame of the Newgrange Currach

For the past four years I presented my progress to the public at the Newgrange visitor centre during Heritage week. This year I bent long ash bows to form a gunnel, which stops the Cow skins breaking the Currach when shrinking. Now with the six cow skins prepared, I spend the next 2 months sewing them together and tonging it them on to the hazel basket. Eight 14-foot oars must be carved out of native timber, and four seats of súgán willow rope woven. With our crew from the Boyne Currach Club ready and willing, the first journey will be 80 km, from here to Wicklow to collect the quartz, and to return to Brú na Bóinne with it, as was done 5,000 years ago!