La Hougue Bie Museum
La Hougue Bie is a historic site with a museum in Jersey's Grouville parish and the fifth most beautiful historical site. La Hougue Bie is featured on the Jersey 1 pound bill issued in 2010.
The site consists of an 18.6-meter-long passageway covered by a 12.2-meter high mound. The site was first excavated in 1925 by Société Jersiaise. Fragments of twenty urns were found along with the scattered remains of at least eight individuals. Pottery, mainly pottery, is also present. On the top of the mound were built two medieval chapels. The Channel Islands have five passage tombs with side chambers (La Hougue Bie, Faldouet and Grantez in Jersey, La Varde, and Le Déhus in Guernsey).
La Hougue Bie is a Neolithic ceremonial site used around 4000-3500 BC. In Western Europe, it is one of the largest and best-preserved passage tombs and the most impressive and best-preserved monument of the Armorican Passage Grave group. Although they are known as "passage graves", they are ceremonial sites, similar in function to churches or cathedrals, random burial places. Since the excavation and restoration of the original entrance of the passage, observations from inside the mausoleum at sunrise on the spring and autumn equinoxes have revealed that the orientation of the passage, may have been randomly allowing the sun's rays to pass through the chamber into the posterior recess of the terminal cell. Although many of the corridor tombs show evidence of continued activity into the Late Neolithic, La Hougue Bie was abandoned before that time.
La Hougue Bie offers a truly memorable experience that is immediately said to be stimulating and peaceful. The site has one of Europe's finest passage tombs, where you can learn about life in Jersey's Neolithic community 6,000 years ago. A medieval chapel sits atop a prehistoric mound and dolmen dominate this quiet and spiritual site. There is a wonderful Tea Room on site.
Location: the Parish of Grouville, Jersey.
