Dun Mor Celtic fort Bulldozed

kerry | environment | press release

Monday July 12, 2004 16:23

by Keith o'Faolain

Keith.OFaolain at students dot ittralee dot ie

destruction of Celtic fort
The 700 metres of earthen works that surrounded the ancient Dun Mor Fort on the Dingle Peninsula were levelled at the weekend by an excavating machine. An entrance and a standing stone with an ogham (Celtic writing) inscription were also removed.

Outrage over destruction of Celtic fort
MONDAY 21/06/2004 17:37:28
Heritage experts today condemned the destruction of part of a 3,000-year-old Celtic fort in Co Kerry.
By:Press Association

The 700 metres of earthen works that surrounded the ancient Dun Mor Fort on the Dingle Peninsula were levelled at the weekend by an excavating machine. An entrance and a standing stone with an ogham (Celtic writing) inscription were also removed.

Heritage Ireland spokeswoman Isobel Smyth said it was a dreadful act.

"This is a very important site and we want to see an investigation carried out," she said.

The 80 acre Dun More fort overlooks the Blasket Islands and the Skelligs. The Ogham stone which was removed contained an inscription to Dhuibne, a deity of the Corca Dhuibne tribe which lived in the area from around 1,000 BC to 600 AD.

Gardai visited the site yesterday and have begun an inquiry into the incident.

"There is no preservation order but it is listed as a National Monument and should not have been interfered with," said a spokesman.

The destruction was uncovered at the weekend by local walking tour guide and amateur archaeologist Con Moriarty.

"Someone has to be held responsible for this outrageous behaviour. People are lamenting the loss of historic sites and artefacts in wartime Iraq but here it is happening in peace time Ireland," he said.

It is understood the man responsible is from the local area. The Dingle Peninsula, which is part of the famous Ring of Kerry route, contains nearly 40 national monuments and around 2,000 other archaeological sites.

Dun Mor was one of the biggest settlements of its kind in Europe, according to Galway-based archaeologist Michael Gibbons.

"The average ring fort was around 30 metres in diameter. This was 500-600 metres. This is vandalism on an unbelievable scale," he said.

According to a Heritage Council survey, around 10% of all national monuments have been lost in the last 10 years. The vast majority of this destruction is carried out by farmers who are reclaiming land. Mr Gibbons said that changes in Irish farming had accelerated the process.

"As farm sizes increase and smaller farms decline, farmers are gobbling up land they have no connection with. We are losing a lot of monuments, especially in Munster," he said.

Under the new National Monuments Bill being prepared by Environment Minister Martin Cullen, the fines for destruction of a national monuments will increase from a maximum of 62,000 euro (£41,000) to 10 million euro (£6.6 million).

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Comments (13 of 13)

disgusting!

by karen fallon - FPC/PSP

Mon Jul 12, 2004 17:16

healka at yahoo dot co dot uk

it is disgusting that the Irish government feels the need to destroy our heritage in this manner.More motorways are not needed and neither it seems is the current Irish administration.

Ignorant Peasants

by Hasselblat

Mon Jul 12, 2004 21:21

I want to wring their necks.

erm

by paul c

Tue Jul 13, 2004 00:08

this is an important but old story this happened over a month ago... it was mentioned on the tara-skyrne feature on the front page

i looked around and coulndt find any more details beyond the two stories in the papers...

Did they get the Ogham stone back?

by Deirdre

Tue Jul 13, 2004 02:29

Can it be put back in place?

If they've only been disturbing the earth around the fort itself then it might not be too bad.

Okay signal from the government

by Terry

Tue Jul 13, 2004 19:43

It is quite clear whoever did this, that they have taken their cue from the recent activities of the government.

First the government destroys Carrickmines Castle, while at the same time pretending they are saving it.

Then they plan to destroy the Tara Valley area, regardless of what anyone thinks.

Then a month or two ago, an amazing find was made in Waterford, probably the best example yet of a Viking settlement and the government again plans to destroy that too.

No wonder people think it is safe and alright to destroy our heritage.

afaik

Wed Jul 14, 2004 00:23

as far as i know in the follow up and last articele that was printed about this in the papers stated that the ogham stone hadn't been removed.

good news today

the council rejected excessive development at the round tower in clondalkin

bad news

dozen of rights of ways were not included in the south county dublin developement plan due to famers concerns over insurance etc....

an c 'ere theres more

by keith

Thu Jul 15, 2004 10:32

i was going down to the black valley a few weeks back and just by molls gap i noticed a big chunk of the mountain had dissappered ........

Quarrying Concern
The operation of an illegal quarry at Molls Gap on the Ring of Kerry Sneem Road is causing concern in tourism circles in the area. This quarry, which was originally in operation in the 1900’s, stopped extraction over 50 years ago.

Kerry County Council have confirmed the issue of an enforcement order on the site but the extraction of material is still continuing.
This quarry, which is on the left hand side of the road on the Sneem side of Molls Gap, is located on one of Ireland's busiest tourist routes and is most visible to the hundreds of visitors passing the area daily.

Tourism interests are most concerned on the effect to the environment in a high profile viewing area and are calling on Kerry County Council to act immediately on this matter.

Appeal for more information and pictures

by T

Sat Jul 17, 2004 16:23

If anyone is down in the Dingle area, can you please drop by the ex Dun Mor ring fort and give us an account of the damage and what is happening.

Better still if you have a digital camera, please take pictures plus some of the surrounding area so that visitors can see the context of the setting.

And does anyone know what is now happening. Is the criminal responsible for this cultural vandalism going to have to pay for the rebuilding of the Fort?

Remember folks what this criminal has done is going to be repeated in Tara Valley by this government.

It will be interesting to see what happens in terms of punishment to the individual or people responsible for the destruction of Dun Mor, because my bet is that they will get off lightly because if there was any harsh puinshment, it will then expose the contradiction of government sanctioned destruction of our heritage in the past, and the planned destruction in the near future.

Suggestion: Online Photographic archive of our Heritage and Environment

Sat Jul 17, 2004 16:31

Anyone interested in the idea of creating some kind of (live) online photographic or image archive of all our ancient sites and our environment.

Something perhaps along the lines of the California Coastline Project

This way we will have a good record of anything of how it looked and so on, after the damage is done. So often after something is destroyed, we don't have a decent easily publicly accessible record of how it was before.

This project was recently described in an article entitled: Saving Malibbu from the Stars
which appeared in the Ecologist. You can link to the article here:
http://www.theecologist.org/archive_article.html?article=445&category=81

hmmm

Sat Jul 17, 2004 23:24

im confused as to how the guy got a hold of the aerial photos and was allowed to publish them? it doens't explain afaik on the page or article

there might be ones for ireland but they're probably copyrighted to ordanance survey and expensive to view off or online (if they are online) ...

they only aerial photos i know of the ones that used to be on the iol page which are gone or the one on the myhome.ie page for property search but are quite useful for lots of other reasons....

i even tried searching for satillite photos once and was looking for aerial photos of beach with some rock climbing routes to no avail...
--
anyway theres's similar english based site http://www.heritageaction.org/
which is amazing as it has cctv cameras of a youth who sprayed a stone circle for you to shop im
--

re dun mor, myself and another person looked for any photos of dun mor and couldn't find any let alone after ones and i looked around on local papers online and couldnt find any articles on the occurances at the time...

re fines
if you read the article above again... you'll see it was the same week the cullen announced _increased_ fines for destruction of heritage sights but thats all a bit late at that point the damage is done...

so you say ah what we need is civil watch of the sites im not sure what orgs there are for heritage ... but the georgian society have given themselves the responsibiliyt to look after gerogian houses but there only so much they can do, they can't helped accidental fires and bank holiday demolitions... and we all know one house that was left empty for years that i heard no evidence that they were pushing the government or the owner to maintaain its upkeep...

the national monuments bill passed through the dail last week without limited contraversy the only people discussing it was academics, part time conservationist and dept of environment ppl... it wasn't on people's minds down the pub which it what needs to be for places like tara to be saved.... but how to cultivate that i don't know...

try this

Mon Jul 19, 2004 17:10

http://www.archaeology-anonymous.org

Re: Hmmm

Thu Jul 29, 2004 00:52

>im confused as to how the guy got a hold of the aerial photos and was allowed to publish them? it doens't explain afaik on the page or article...

Actually the Ecologist article explains that the California Coastlines website was setup by this chap along with this couple who had made a fortune out of the IT business and they flew their own helicopter, while his wife/partner took the photographs.

The photographs from 1972, apparently came to light recently and were found by someone who obviously had them as part of their own collection or acquired them years ago. Most of these are now scanned in.

I don't think, it would be absolutely necessary to have aerial photographs.

The general idea would be to take submissions from the public of photographs taken by individuals and so build up an archive that way.

So next time anyone is anywhere interesting, they could start their own collection and keep it on their own PC or whatever until eventually somebody starts a site to collate them all into a public record or archive, which we can then all reference.

Ignorant peasants!!

by c quinn

Fri Nov 26, 2004 10:56

And what do you think you are writing comments like this??????

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Dun Mor Celtic fort Bulldozed

Comments (13 of 13)