Crannog, Drumreask, Co. Monaghan

Co. Monaghan |

Settlement Sites

Crannog, Drumreask, Co. Monaghan

On the northern shore of Drumreaske Lough in County Monaghan, something sits in the water that does not quite behave like what it is supposed to be.

Classified as a crannog, the site presents itself instead as a low, circular mound of stone and overgrown vegetation, roughly fifteen metres across and just a metre high, now surrounded by flooded woodland. A crannog is an artificial or semi-artificial island, typically built up from timber piling, brushwood, and earth during the early medieval period, used as a defended homestead or place of refuge. This one, however, shows no evidence of piling at all, which raises quiet questions about how it was constructed, and perhaps about whether it belongs to the crannog category at all.

The lough itself is a modestly sized, roughly subrectangular body of water, running approximately two hundred metres north to south and widening considerably towards its southern end. The 1908 edition of the Ordnance Survey six-inch map depicts the site as a fairly large island, suggesting that the surrounding woodland flooding is a more recent development, and that what was once a visible, discrete landform has gradually been absorbed into a changed waterscape. The mound, cairn-like in its present form, sits within that drowned woodland, its outline still readable but its context transformed by time and water-level changes.

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Pete F
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