What is recorded here

Thirty-six centuries before Christ, hands cut twenty-four ditch segments across the Boyne floodplain, spacing them barely half a metre apart around a central mound. That repeated measurement turned raw earth into a living calendar, forcing every participant to remember the same rhythm under the open sky. The henge still holds that discarded shape, waiting for modern feet to walk its broken circle and feel the patience of its makers.

Located on the floodplain on the N bank of a W-E section of the River Boyne, c. 140m from the river in Brú na Bóinne. This was first identified through a LiDAR survey (Davis et al. 2010, 180, LP2) as a low-profile mound (ME019-094001-) with slight traces of an outer enclosure (ext. diam. c. 140m) defined by an extremely low bank. Geophysical survey (10R0124: Barton 2010a) of the mound revealed evidence of an excavated feature (dims 16m x 2m) aligned roughly NNE-SSW with splayed terminals, each 7m wide. It was suggested (Davis et. al. 2013, 233) that this may represent the remains of a passage tomb. Aerial photographs taken by the National Monuments Service in July 2018 (Condit and Keegan 2018, 36-43) show that the enclosure (int. diam. 114m N-S; 103m E-W), which has come to be known as the Univallate Henge, is defined by a relatively slight earthen bank (Wth c. 7.5m) with an internal segmented ditch surrounding the central mound. The 24 segments of ditch (dims 6.2-7.3m x 1.5m) are remarkably regular with in-turned ends and are placed 4.9-5.3m apart. A likely entrance is identified at ESE where the bank appears to be absent and there is a wider gap between the fosse segments. About 20m inside the segmented ditch at N an arc of a parallel ditch and other features are tentatively visible. The perimeter is interrupted by a NNE-SSW field bank at W, and the mortuary enclosure (ME019-094002-) interrupts the bank of the henge at NW. Another long mortuary enclosure (ME019-094003-) is just outside the henge at ENE, and the Geometric Henge (ME026-033----) is c. 80m to the ESE. See the attached aerial view from SW Compiled by: Paul Walsh Revised by: Michael Moore Date of revised upload: 08 October 2025

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