Achill-henge is joyfully mad

I’M just back from Achill, a wet windy outpost of mountains and cliffs, where it gets dark later than anywhere else in Europe.

On the map, Ireland’s largest island resembles a hand gun pointed at America. With 87% of it covered in blanket bog, you wouldn’t expect Achill to figure on the world stage but you’d be wrong. Its adopted sons include a famous painter, a great English novelist and a Nobel Prize winning giant of German literature. Sir John Franklin stayed with the Achill Mission shortly before his tragic attempt to find the North West Passage. The island first came to public attention when a fanatical cleric arrived in the 19th Century. That story wasn’t finally put to bed until last year, when Catholic and Church of Ireland bishops prayed over the unmarked graves of 190 ‘soupers’.

The island’s latest controversy concerns ‘Achill-henge’, (insert, right) a circle of pre-cast concrete slabs resembling the famous structure on Salisbury Plain. Planning authorities want it removed. However, according to an article in The Mayo News, scientist-musician Richard Brock thinks it ‘could yield valuable clues to musical archaeologists’. Tests he carried out show that ‘echoes of sound made in the centre of the mass concrete circle create a dome of sound in much the same way as the original Stonehenge.