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Monks living and working at an abbey named Beaubec (Co Meath) just outside Drogheda, Co Louth, in the medieval era carried out extensive tillage and harvested grain for export to a Cistercian abbey in France, a research conference held in the Conyngham Arms Hotel, Slane, was told recently.
The presence of a two-storey structure on land owned by farmer and historian John McCullen at Beamore had always intrigued him and excavations carried out on the site by archaeologists Geraldine and Matthew Stout (generously aided by FBD Insurance) has helped illustrate the role of the Cistercians in the commercial development and international trade through the port of Drogheda.
The archaeologists believe that the site at Beaubec is the home of a 13th century monastic farm associated with the French Cistercian foundation of De Bello Becco (Beaubec).
A previous excavation had been carried out by archaeologist Donald Murphy in the 1980s.
Ms Stout told the Slane conference – titled The Pleasant Boyne and organised by the UCD School of Archaeology as part of the World Heritage Programme – that there was extensive tillage and drying of corn for export at Beaubec in Co Meath.
Log boats
The conference also heard that an underwater archaeological reconnaissance of the bed of the river Boyne near the Brú na Bóinne complex in Co Meath has revealed features that may represent log boats or man-made quays.
The sonar study, carried out by Dr Annalisa Christie of UCD and Dr Kieran Westley of the University of Ulster, surveyed 10km of the river from Oldbridge to a weir 1.8km east of Slane Bridge.
Dr Christie said that it was likely that for the first visitors to this landscape the river provided the easiest way to travel, offering an accessible route through a largely wooded landscape.
As such, it represented a major communications artery, not just for local visitors but also connecting communities in the area to those from further afield such as Wales or even Orkney.
Dr Christie said that 100 “anomalous features” were revealed in the study and these were assessed and were classified according to how likely they were to have been created as a result of past human activity, and their likely archaeological interest.
“Features that were clearly man-made, and were likely historically or archaeologically important, were considered of high archaeological potential.
"In addition to a few possible log boats, two other features stand out as being of interest – one an alignment of six stones that clearly formed part of all of a weir, the other a strong linear feature that was clearly a sub-surface continuation of a wall in the river bank which could possible have been used as a quay”, she said.
Folklore
Archaeology researcher at UCD Allison Galbari said that millions of pages of folklore connected with the River Boyne were now housed at UCD and work was now in progress on the digitisation of the collection.
Tom Condit of the National Monuments Service said that processions and processional routes were, even in modern times, part and parcel of religious festivals and events and he described how cursus monuments, formally laid-out ritual routeways controlling direction and views of the surrounding visual landscape, indicated that such processions also took place in the late Neolithic period in Brú na Bóinne.
That Brú na Bóinne was not just a place for the interment of the dead was amply demonstrated by the presence of monuments dating to the late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age, such as the henge monuments, the timber circle and, in particular, the Newgrange curcus. The Brú na Bóinne site had the highest concentration of henges in the world, he said.
Clíodhna Ní Lionáin, project archaeologist at Dowth Hall in Co Meath where a 5,500 passage tomb was uncovered in 2018, said that, to date, two burial chambers have been discovered within the western part of the main passage tomb, over which a large stone cairn has been raised.
Rituals
One of the interesting finds there was that of the skull of a woman, aged between 17 and 25, and inside that skull were bones of a child and animals, pointing to possible ritual ceremonies.
In a contribution entitled 'Hidden in Plain Sight', journalist and author Anthony Murphy described how he and an associate Ken Williams discovered a giant previously unknown monument, a Neolithic henge measuring 154 metres in diameter, by using a drone over the Brú na Bóinne complex.
The conference was organised by Dr Steve Davis, UCD School of Archaeology.
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