Thursday Doors – Dundalk Museum 1

No, this isn’t the entrance to the museum in Dundalk but it does make an interesting Thursday Doors photo. Located in a beautifully restored 18th century warehouse, the award-winning County Museum traces the history of Dundalk and County Louth from the Mesolithic era to the modern day through a variety of interactive displays. With three floors of permanent exhibitions and a changing and extensive programme of temporary displays covering drama, music recitals, storytelling festivals, lecture and film, the museum has something of interest for everyone and is well worth a visit. *

There is a street entrance on the other side but it’s not nearly as beautiful as this one.

The stone axehead is dated 4,000 – 2,000 BC and the bronze spearhead is dated 900 – 600 BC. Both found not too far from Dundalk.

The displays are so interesting and informative, it was difficult to choose what to include in this post without making it as long as a wet week. I’m intrigued by the secrets bogs contain and we have a lot of bogland in Ireland. Butter used to be stored in them to preserve it and one of the oldest found so far was buried over 2,000 years ago. If you’d like to see some National Geographic photos and find out more about Céide Fields, an archaeological site older than Egypt’s Pyramids, I’ll leave a link at the end of this post. It’s fascinating.

What on earth was a Barbary ape doing in Ireland?

Have you heard of Ogham stones? Ogham is the earliest form of writing in Ireland, it dates to around 4th century A.D. and was in use for around 500 years. The Ogham alphabet is made up of a series of strokes along or across a line. Ogham is sometimes referred to as the “Celtic Tree Alphabet” as a number of the letters are linked to old Irish names for certain trees. The alphabet was carved on standing stones to commemorate someone, using the edge of the stone as the centre line. They normally read from the left hand side bottom up, across the top and if need be down the other side.**

Thanks for joining me this month at the Dundalk museum, I’ll have more from there in my next post but in the meantime check out some more Thursday Doors over on Dan’s blog.

National Geographic – Irish Bog Finds *

Ogham Stones of Ireland **

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