Crannog, Derryoughter, Co. Leitrim

Co. Leitrim |

Settlement Sites

Crannog, Derryoughter, Co. Leitrim

In the reeds fringing the southern shore of Drumgilra Lough, also known as Gortinty Lough, a small oval island sits almost indistinguishable from its surroundings.

It is roughly fourteen and a half metres at its longest, barely a metre above the waterline, and overgrown enough that it barely registers as artificial. But the timber piles visible at its north-western edge suggest otherwise. This is a crannog, a type of artificial or partially artificial island that was constructed in lakes across Ireland and Scotland from the Bronze Age onwards, often serving as a defensible homestead for a family or local lord. The silt connecting it to the southern shore may be natural accumulation, or it may be the remnant of a causeway.

The lake itself is a subrectangular body of water, running roughly eight hundred to nine hundred metres on its north-east to south-west axis, widening toward the north-east end. The crannog sits within a small bay of around one hundred to one hundred and twenty-five metres in diameter, sheltered by reeds, which would have offered both concealment and a degree of natural protection. A small island at what appears to be this location was recorded on the 1945 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map, meaning the feature was visible and mapped within living memory, though its archaeological character was documented later by Michael J. Moore in the Archaeological Inventory of County Leitrim, published in 2003. The timber piles at the north-western margin are the clearest surviving trace of human construction, the kind of structural remnant that, in waterlogged conditions, can sometimes survive for centuries or even millennia.

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