Late Neolithic Henge uncovered at Lismullin.

During recent construction works on the M3 motorway at Lismullin, Co. Meath, archaeologists have uncovered an astonishing find of a type that must, because of the rarity of similar features in Ireland, be considered a national monument and be treated under the appropriate legislation.

The feature is a henge structure; a circular enclosure (80 m in diameter) with a smaller inner central enclosure (16 m in diameter). Two further rows of stake holes show evidence of an entrance and passageway from the outer enclosure to the inner enclosure. The monument has been heavily truncated by ploughing in the past and the surviving features are shallow and fragile.

Minister for the Environment Dick Roche is now required to enforce legislation, drafted by minister Martin Cullen. The National Monuments Acts provide that where the discovery of a National Monument has been reported to the Minister he must consult with the Director of the National Museum, Patrick Wallace, before issuing directions in the matter to the road authority.

Pending any directions by the Minister, no works which would interfere with the Monument may be carried out, except works urgently required to secure its preservation, carried out in accordance with measures specified by the Minister. In this instance, the archaeological team was authorised to continue to clean back the surface of the area, to complete a plan of the features and to check for associated features outside the enclosure. A small number of the stakeholes are also to be excavated to try to recover sufficient material for radiocarbon dating.
No further excavation of the enclosure will take place pending the decision of the Minister on any directions to issue in relation to the monument.

Under the National Monuments Act The period for consultation should take no more than 14
days from the day the consultative process was commenced by the Minister or such other period as may, in any particular case, be agreed to between the Minister and the Director of the
National Museum of Ireland. However, the Act also allows for the Minister to exercise his own "discretion" in the "public interest" to injure to or interfere with the national monument concerned, or to destroy the monument in whole or in part! It doesn't seem to make much sense to me that the destruction of such a rare and important find could in any way be considered to be in the public interest.

Henges by definition tend to be ritual sites rather than defensive structures by virtue of the fact that a henge comprises of an external bank and an internal ditch. This kind of structure is clearly not designed to be defended from the inside as defensive structures have the bank and ditch the other way round. The purpose of such a construction seems to have been to symbolically cut off the internal area of the henge from its surrounding environment. Features such as this, and what evidence may be found of activity on the site, are invaluable in helping us better understand how our ancestors perceived the world around them and their relationship with it.

Henges are usually associated with the Late Neolithic period. The Neolithic, or New Stone Age, period has been cited in Ireland from about 4000 to 2500 BC and this then leads into the Early Bronze Age which in Ireland is normally considered to start in a range from 2500 BC to 2000 BC. This means our site could be 4500 years old and shows that there is continuity and a firm relationship, based on the time of its construction, between it and the nearby structures on the Hill of Tara itself.

It will be very interesting to see if the Minister will give any regard whatsoever to the consultation he receives from the Director of the National Museum or just plough ahead and destroy this rare gem for the sake of a motorway that is expected to cost the Irish taxpayer in and around the 1 billion euro mark only to have yet another toll system that, like the one on the M50, will defeat the purpose of the motorway. It will squander the opportunity to devise an intelligent and imaginative solution to the traffic nightmare that has been created by rising prices in the capital coupled with little investment in employment in Meath, turning royal Meath into a dormitory county with severe commuter problems. This decision will be yet another acid test for Roche and for Fíanna Fáil with regard to their commitment to the needs of the people in the royal county over those of shady political business interests. A test that they can ill afford to fail with an election on the cards in the coming weeks.

Fingers crossed that this site is preserved and that it acts as a focus for just how wrong the planning and provision of transport infrastructure can go in the wrong hands.

Some media coverage of this discovery
Definition of a Henge from wikipedia