Reinstatement
On Wednesday September 14th 2011 Archaeological Survey of the Mound began (report to follow). On foot of this it was decided on September 21st that reinstatement should begin immediately. This was equinox, and the sun almost shone in through the window again, only about a 2mm shadow remained on the inner aspect of the window stone.
It was with heavy heart we lined the northern roofless exposed section with terram membrane and covered it in with clay; such a thing of beauty. We took solace from the knowledge that we were not the first to bury it ,hopefully it might not be buried for as long this time ,and at least it would be preserved and easy to expose again without any risk of harm.
Pat took the precaution of marking the date on the board. Because we did not rebury the stones (still having to figure out where they might have come from) the clay alone which came from this section only half or slightly better refilled it ,and so had to be lined with terram and some of the spoil clay from the southern section put in on top.
Imperative it was now to rebuild the front southern-most face of the souterrain, which had to be fully re-exposed for reason of the survey, with clay. There was a catch. The three stones which define the function of the souterrain had rested only on clay. Without the expertise of the original builders of
working with this substance to call upon, we decided to put in a stone foundation so transforming the window into a window-box. Once taken out these stones had been laid out in correct position awaiting re-internment. The outermost one can be seen in situ beneath the feet of the little boy in the first three pictures "Images1", (you are now at the end of "Images4") The first readjustment of this window-box during November elevated its angle of declination by about 15 degrees and the second on December 19th by another 20 degrees. Now it looked right and we knew that it was dead-on.
The junction between the large southern roofed section of the souterrain and the small "creep" passage was still very vulnerable. We were afraid that the whole structure might disintegrate a little at a time from this point onwards. By this time we had come to realize that the big square stone from the floor of the (roofed) cave which we had put across the entrance of the small "creep" passage belonged here. It seemed reasonable to assume that the souterrain was broken into at this point when it was abandoned to make the task of (internal) burial easier.
On October 14th this part was rebuilt using that big square stone as the lynchpin. Terram membrane was placed between the original and the restored. We had a good mark of where the sun was each day at 2pm as it shone into the cave---above a lone bush on the brow of a hill between the more western mobile phone mast and a blue barrel. One day we made a visit and found it was a place where three fields came together at a stone wall junction, with a gap in the wall between two of the fields.
Standing on the rickety wall you can look right down on the tonroesouterrain mound and if you lift your eyes and look up directly over it, the big mound in Rathcroghan is right in front of you (surprise, surprise). Thirty yards to the west of where you are standing is the remains of a "Henge", away off to the north-west a small satellite mound, east of this a rath ,east again a ring-barrow, next the big mound and finally Daithi's stone. Along the same valley as the tonoesouterrain are other mounds hidden from view.
Pat stabilized this bit of wall in October and topped the few bushes which slightly obstructed the view. As an aside, eighteen mounds can be seen from Stonehenge, I wonder how many can be seen from Rathcroghan? Unlike Stonehenge Rathcrogan does not have a winter solstice alignment along its main axis; its marker stone on the south face is high up on a high mound, unlike tonroe whose marker stone is low on a low mound, I wonder why?
