Photos show ancient sites in a new light
“We are seeing that, perhaps not as much on our monuments in state care, but on the very wide range of other monuments that we have outside of state care. “Coastal sites are particularly vulnerable through coastal erosion. There are ones that we are continuing to look at to assess... the sites that are most at risk.
Care
“Overall the programme of care that we carry out is solid... but we must continue to be vigilant to identify what sites are increasingly vulnerable.
“We are seeing those impacts and to address those we developed a climate change sectoral adaptation plan in 2019.
“We work with our Office of Public Works on monitoring the condition of certain sites, seeing the changes and adapting our response in terms of conservation and trying to anticipate where damage may be caused and see what we can do to prevent it.
“The use of photography as part of the approach to conservation is vital,” he added.
“What photography does is provide a picture at a time and then we are able to monitor that change and obviously every conser- vation that’s made into the monument must be recorded and that forms part of the archive.
Balance
“The state of national monuments are a wonderful balance between resilient and vulnerable, many have been standing hundreds of years if not thousands of years.”
Michael says the Monumental Ireland exhibition shows the “jewels in our crown of our monument estate” and it’s the first time an exhibition of this size has been opened to the public.
The images featured were chosen from an archive of over half a million photographs.
They includes remarkable new imagery from a two-year “lock down” project between NMS and OPW which shows the Winter Solstice in the burial chamber’s passage, allowing the sunrise phenomenon to be witnessed by everyone.
Mr MacDonagh said: “We have such a range of monuments and such a range of periods.
“One I particularly enjoy is the Newgrange Solstice project which was carried out by ourselves and the Office of Public Works over a couple of years... while access to the chamber at the Winter Solstice was excluded because of public health restrictions.
Minister of State for Heritage and Electoral Reform, Malcolm Noonan, said: “This exhibition is a wonderful display of the beauty of our archaeological monument in State care, managed by OPW.
“I applaud the work of our National Monuments Service in curating this exhibition and managing its extraordinary photographic archive.”
Minister of State with responsibility for the OPW Patrick O’Donovan added: “Our partnership with the National Monuments Service is a strong one. The photographing...is a really important record.”