FOR generation after generation, the people of Jersey gazed at the strange mound rising abruptly from the ground at Hougue Bie and wondered. They wondered deeply enough to dream up a legend about the Seigneur of Hambye in Normandy and the dragon he supposedly killed on the site.
They also elaborated this to include a treacherous squire who murdered his lord after he had been weakened in the battle with the dragon, married the lord’s wife and then betrayed himself by talking in his sleep.
It was hard to resist the idea that the Hougue Bie mound was a special place ÷ which was doubtless why, in medieval times, two chapels were built on its summit. However, strange as it may seem, the mound was not excavated until 1924, when work on public lavatories exposed hidden stonework.
Those early 20th century excavations revealed one of the finest Neolithic passage graves in western Europe, plus evidence of the New Stone Age inhabitants of the Island who earned a living through farming and fishing some 5,500 years ago.
The bones of eight people, three women and five men, plus pottery fragments, were found in the compartments at the sides of the main passage, which is formed from stones poised upright in the soil and then capped with horizontal slabs.
Some stones bear ‘cup marks’, shallow depressions which hint at some message, so far undeciphered, passed down to us from a distant age when technology was in its infancy.
Thanks to excavation, limited restoration, electric light and the Societe Jersiaise, who are the custodians of this priceless relic, 21st century man can experience the eerie atmosphere of a tomb built, in all probability, for a Stone Age chieftain and his family.
The stones, the narrow passage they create and the oppressive presence of the pile of rubble and soil overhead are in themselves deeply impressive.
More impressive still is the lab-our and dedication that the Hougue Bie tomb must have involved.
Without the aid of modern materials or machinery, the Neolithic inhabitants of the Island, probably few in number, manhandled massive stones from miles away and manoeuvred them carefully into position. They also gathered sufficient spoil and debris to raise a mound standing 14 metres high over their work.
Today, the passage grave remains the key feature of the site, but there are other reasons for visiting it. The chapels, which date from the 12th century and were elaborated in the 15th by Dean Richard Mabon after he had made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, repay examination.
So, too, do the small museums and the concrete command bunker the German forces built near the foot of the mound during the Occupation.
Fittingly for a place which already had such a powerful reminder of past ages, the bunker is now the home of a poignant memorial to those who suffered at the hands of the Nazis in the Second World War.
This article first appeared in the Jersey Evening Post as part of the Pride in Jersey series, marking the Island’s 1204-2004 celebrations.
