Solstice magic hampered by weather

Every year, crowds gather at Newgrange for the Winter Solstice

A handful of people, picked from a lottery of 34,000 names, celebrated the winter solstice at the Irish ancient burial site of Newgrange on Sunday.

On 21 December - the shortest day of the year - the sun shines deep into the tomb in County Meath, flooding the neolithic chamber with light.

But poor weather dampened celebrations this year. The sun's rays should have entered the chamber at 0858 GMT on Sunday. But cloudy skies meant this failed to happen.

Usually, at the solstice, as the sun's rays clear the horizon, they illuminate, in perfect alignment, a 19-metre passage and chamber.

In the days before Christianity, festivals were held around the winter solstice to welcome back the longer, lighter days and pay tribute to the Sun.

The Newgrange tomb is one of Ireland's top tourist attractions.

Newgrange: Pic: Knowth.com

It dates to about 3200 BC - 1,000 years before Britain's Stonehenge was built and 500 years before Egypt's Great Pyramid of Giza.

People travelled from the United States, Canada, Italy, Switzerland, Australia, Poland and Britain for the experience.

The prehistoric tomb was carefully aligned by its Neolithic builders so the sun only cuts through the gloom of the chamber at sunrise through a small window above the entrance.

When skies are clear, the rising sun slowly shines all the way down the 19-metre long chamber into the centre of the tomb, lighting it for up to 17 minutes before the rays disappear and darkness returns.

The sun lights up where the cremated ashes of the dead were laid on large stone basins deep inside the tomb.

Newgrange is believed to be the world's oldest continuously roofed building.

When the tomb's solstice phenomenon was discovered in 1967, archaeologists were astonished Stone Age builders had the architectural skills and scientific understanding of the sun's movement that was needed to construct it.

The grass-roofed tomb is about 13 metres high and 85 metres in diameter, and covers almost half a hectare.

About 200,000 tonnes of stone and earth were used to build it.