Crannog

The National Monuments Service's description

In 1952 drainage works on the Boyle River lowered the water level of the Lough Gara lakes, and artefacts recovered from crannogs were reported to the National Museum of Ireland. That autumn, Dr. J. Raftery and Miss E. Prendergast of the Museum staff collected artefacts from about 150 crannogs which they noted in the lakes and on the Boyle River. Dr. Raftery permitted Mr. R. E. Cross, the project engineer, to publish a map (1953) based on his own preliminary survey with numbered crannogs, a copy of which is now held in the Department of Archaeology at University College Dublin.
This large crannog (Raftery No. 124) was located in a bay at the W end of Lough Gara Lower, and was excavated (E000020) by Raftery in the 1950s when occupation levels from the early medieval, and possibly the Neolithic, were recorded (Raftery 1957). It was a raised D-shaped area (dims 30m NE-SW; 26m NW-SE; H 0.75-1m). (Fredengren 2002, App. 1, 32, BOYL 056).

Compiled by: Michael Moore

Date of revised upload: 9 November 2017

References

Cross, R.E. 1953 Lough Gara: a preliminary survey. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 83, 93-6, 245-54.

Fredengren, C. 2002 The crannogs of Lough Gara - a social history. Bray. Wordwell.

Raftery, J. 1957 Lake dwellings in Ireland. Scientific Service 4, 5-15.