tara old royal site

A skirmish took place here in 1798, and in the last century O'Connell held a mammoth meeting on the Hill to reinforce his demand for the repeal of the Act of Union. The visitor to the Hill may be disappointed in what he sees; there are no signs of great regal places - nothing but simple earthworks remain.

The buildings must have been made of wood or wattle and daub, and all have long since disappeared. Indeed the old literary sources suggest that many more buildings existed than there are earthworks on the hill. But the visitor must use his imagination, and create in his mind's eye a number of comparatively small buildings dotting the hill, and he must use his fantasy to see these buildings peopled by the King and his supporters busying themselves with 'old forgotten far-off things and battles long ago'. The most prominent monument on the hill is also the oldest. It is the Mound of the Hostages, which, on excavation, proved to be a small Passage-tomb (locked) having a narrow passage (with a decorated stone) leading to a small chamber.

It dates to around 1800 B.C. but was also used in the ensuing centuries for secondary burials. The mound stands in the northern part of a large enclosure surrounded by a bank with a ditch outside it. This enclosure is a Hill Fort, a type of fortification typical of Iron Age, and therefore much later than the Mound of the Hostages. In the middle of this enclosure stand two linked ringforts known as the Royal Seat and Cormac's House respectively. Cormac's House has two banks and two ditches around it, the outer one making a bend on the north side to include an old burial mound. In the centre of it, beside the atrocious statue of St. Patrick, is the Lia Fail, Ireland's most obvious prehistoric phallic symbol, which originally stood near the Mound of the Hostages but which was re-erected here in honour of those who died in the skirmish in 1798. The Kings were crowned on the stone, and tradition says that it roared when the king was accepted. To the south of the royal enclosure are the remains of another circular earthwork known as the Fort of King Laoghaire. To the north of the Royal enclosure, on the other side of the fence, is the Rath of the Synods, a ringfort with three banks which was devastated in the early years of this century by British Israelites who dreamed that they would find the Ark of the Covenant in it. But while their dream did not come true, their dig found objects which, taken together with later excavated material, helped to show that houses which stood on the site were surrounded by palisades and were built in the first three centuries of our era. In the graveyard beside it there are two stones, one decorated with a small figure with crossed legs.

To the north of the Rath of the Synods is a long hollow area surrounded by banks. This is allegedly the 'Banqueting Hall' where everyone sat, graded by his status, but it could just as easily have been the grand entrance road to the site, as all old Irish roads led to Tara. To the north-west of the Banqueting Hall there are other round earthworks, one called Grainne's fort after King Cormac's daughter who was the heroine of the tragic love tale of Diarmuid and Grainne, and the others known as the Sloping Trenches. About half a mile to the south of Tara Hill is another hill crowned with another Hill-fort called Rath Maeve. An area about 7520 feet in diameter is enclosed by a large bank and ditch which has partly disappeared, but a portion of it is well preserved near the road.