Madam, - In your edition of June 23rd Elaine Keogh outlined a new initiative to draft a management plan for Tara.
This, in itself is welcome: as a complex archaeological site Tara warrants interdisciplinary consultation in its management. In addition, the exponential increase in visitor numbers over the last decade is potentially erosive to the monuments themselves.
Ms Keogh's observation, however, that there is no evidence of damage to the monuments at Tara at present is countered in spectacular fashion by the accompanying photograph of solstice celebrants around the Lia Fail which shows a new pavement around the base of this 5,000-year-old monolith.
Quite apart from my serious reservations from an archaeological point of view about sinking a pavement into the surface of an extant prehistoric earthwork, the pavement, comprising a halo of pre-cast concrete cobbles, radiating crazy-paving style, is entirely inappropriate and violently injurious to the cultural and aesthetic sanctity of the site and its rural context.
The pavement - which, contrary to standard conservation practice, is bonded directly to the stone - appears to have been put there to remedy the pooling of water and mud around the base of the stone (a discomfort to visitors, but one caused by them in the first place). Instead, it has created an impermeable ring, and an undrained annular pool, immediately around the stone itself.
This is potentially disastrous because a vertical fissure at this point on the north side of the stone will draw in moisture through capillary attraction and become susceptible to fracturing and disintegration through freeze-thaw.
One looks forward to the implementation of a management plan that, by enshrining the principle of consultation with the full spectrum of relevant expertise, can consider all aspects of the care, preservation and presentation of the Hill of Tara. - Yours, etc.,
CONOR NEWMAN, Department of Archaeology, National University of Ireland, Galway.