Crannog, Rakeeragh, Co. Monaghan
Co. Monaghan |
Settlement Sites
On the south-western shore of Lismagonway Lough in County Monaghan sits a small, tree-covered island that is almost certainly not natural.
The lough itself is modest today, an oval stretch of water roughly 225 metres north to south and 175 metres east to west, but the marshy ground surrounding it hints at a larger, sub-triangular basin that once extended considerably further. Within that shrunken lake lies what is believed to be a crannog, an artificial island constructed from timber, stone, and compacted earth, used throughout prehistoric and early medieval Ireland as a defensible dwelling place reached by boat or concealed causeway.
The cartographic record gives a quiet sense of how the site has shifted over time. The 1834 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map shows the feature as a distinct island, clearly separated from the shoreline. By the 1907 edition, it appears connected to the bank, most likely a consequence of the lake gradually shrinking and the surrounding wetlands encroaching. That contraction is itself significant: it suggests the lough was once a far more substantial body of water, and that the island's builders chose their location with care, placing their settlement well out from the shore. The structure is now thought to be an artificial cairn, a mound of piled stone beneath the trees, rather than the timber-framed platforms more commonly associated with crannogs, though the two forms are not mutually exclusive.
The island is inaccessible today, hemmed in by boggy ground and the remnants of a lake that has been slowly retreating for generations. The trees growing from it are really the only visible sign that something deliberate once rose from this water.