Boyne Currach Heritage Group

Welcome to the Boyne Currach Heritage Group, bringing our past heritage to life, as we seek for answers to Ireland’s ancient maritime questions…..

The Boyne Currach Heritage Group is based in the world heritage site of Brú na Boinne. Its aim is to rediscover ancient skills and crafts used by our Neolithic passage tomb ancestors who brought their civilisation and culture from Europe to our Irish shores and left behind them threads of evidence that we now work from to try to explore who these people were and how they lived along the banks of the River Boyne.

Located in the world heritage site of Brú na Boinne, on the banks of the river Boyne, overlooking the tomb of Newgrange, we facilitate educational programmes based on both the tangible and intangible aspect of our heritage.

Currachs Past, Present & Future

Currach Past
Currach Present
Currach Future

View Our Online Shop

View our online shop - T-shirts, books and hand carved currach folk.
All proceeds go towards the Boyne Currach Heritage Group's project work.

Our Partners

Become a Friend

Here at the National Boyne Currach Centre, we aim to preserve the cultural history of leather boats, both by experimental Maritime Archaeology and modernising the ever-expanding currach methods used for racing around the world. Our aims are aspirational, and we see currach making as a way to engage with similar minded people, be it through language, crafts or physically involved in the maintenance and use of the boats. Since our foundation, we have made great inroads to the question of how Stone Age mariners crossed the seas in wicker currachs, clad with leather, sewn only with rawhide and sailed using vellum sails. Our aim is to return across the seas in a woven ship has come closer to a reality with your support we can progress with our efforts to turning our aspirations into a reality. Please support our project......become a friend.......by becoming a member or visiting our shop.

Currach Building

A Boyne Currach is made from just three ingredients; hazel, willow and animal hide, and each of these components has a story to tell. It has been suggested that the skin currach has little negative impact on the environment because it is made of totally renewable materials.

Using the Currach

Because of its robust nature, the leather clad currach was always depicted larger than life in an attempt to over state their abilities and importance. The first images of the craft was first drawn for a travel journal in the 1840s during the great famine, but the uses of the boyne currach was first written about in 1366, as it directed flotillas of building material from an inland port down the river to the town of Drogheda alongside the Boyne estuary.

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