November 06, 2004
Vandals
In the late 18th century, an Italian road-building project south of Salerno stumbled across the Greek temples of Poseidonia (now called Paestum) dating from the sixth century BC. The engineer in charge decided to build right through them, but was prosecuted for desecrating a national monument. Wouldn't happen here...
Some years ago, my father decided to build a wall near the end of our farmyard. Since there was a power-cable running underground nearby, he asked a guy he knew to come in and trace the line of the cable, so it wouldn't be accidentally cut while digging the foundation. You see, the chap in question owned a metal detector, and while he walked around the yard listening for the beep that would have indicted the cable, he regaled us with stories of swords found in the bog, daggers, chalices coins and other booty detected and removed from land during surreptitious visits to neighbouring farms. "No names mentioned, mind". We might have been more convinced if he had been able to find the cable.
It's actually illegal to use any form of detection device near a listed site. That doesn't just apply to sites that have an OPW plaque or that are open to the public. It applies to the complete list of sites that appear in each county's Record of Monument & Places which pretty much covers every single pile of stones in every field. If a landowner, for instance, wants to do some digging in a field where there is a listed site, he must inform the council two months in advance. I wonder how often that happens?
Anyone building a house these days gets to pay an architect a day's pay to watch the digging of the foundations. The hope is that his fee is indeed a waste of money - if he finds anything, say goodbye to your planning permission and your house. And why not? Is it nor right that our antiquities are protected? However, the law works a little different when the state itself wants to build something.
Sometimes I think that if we discovered a pyramid in this country, the first instinct would be to build a road over it. The Civic Offices in Dublin, built on top of an ancient Viking site during the Seventies on the side of the river Liffey and completely obscuring the river view of Christchurch Cathedral, stands as a monument to the ignorance and carelessness of the state. I hope I live long enough to see this ugly, bunker-like structure dismantled completely and erased from both sight and memory. But sometimes, I wonder if we've learned anything. Currently there is a plan to build a new road near the Hill of Tara, cutting right through a valley that has not yet been fully excavated but has already shown itself to be one of the richest archaeological sites in the country. Needless to say, there have been plenty of protests. Similar protests at the prospect of building over the remains of Carrickmines Castle (part of the M50 ring road around Dublin) made no difference - soon, it will be inaccessible and some of it will be destroyed. But the mood in government is to build roads; plenty of 'em as quickly as possible.
Now, I'm all for good, new roads. But I despair of the laziness and short-sightedness that leads to roads being built across what's left of our heritage. It's not like these sites were discovered after the road had begun. Carrickmines could easily have been avoided, but wasn't. But what about the cost?
Yes, it will probably more to detour the Tara site than go through it. So what? Government ministers spend money like there's no tomorrow on issues that they actually care about - over the life of the road, the extra millions will count for very little. Avoiding the visual impact would come to be valued as a good and wise decision. It's not like anyone admires the Dublin Civic Offices on value-for-money grounds.
So will it happen? Well, the good news is that Martin Cullen was moved from the Department of the Environment to the Dept. Of Transport at the end of the summer. Cullen's sole contribution to the environment was to disband Dúchas, itself an act of vandalism. His replacement, Dick Roche is not long enough in the job to make a judgement but he'll have to really try hard to be any worse than his predecessor.
Posted by Monasette at November 6, 2004 10:44 PM