Craggaunowen castle is in a park where the major attraction is a "crannog", which is a iron age celtic strong place.
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The castle though is worth visiting, and in a very good state. It was built around 1550, by th eMcNamarra familly.
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The inside of the place have benn painted and furnished to give an idea of what life could have been in such irish clan towers.
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We even had the chance to meet a very pretty young irish spinning wool on a traditionnal weel.
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The central theme is not quite medieval, but we kind of greatly enjoyed the "iron age road", the celtic fort, the reconstitution of Saint Brendan's Boat, and, most of all : the boars
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That's a nice park to visit (but count on a full day there) for those who dont know. It is quite close to the Quin Abbey.

Here is the link to the Shannon Heritage site : http://www.shannonheritage.com/Craggaunowen_Day.htm

Any pics of the crannog, we have the remains of them in lochs all over Scotland, and one reconstruction at Loch Tay.
The Crannog Centre

Sure i also have plenty of pics of the crannog !!
you shouldn't have asked ! i'm a picmaniac !
Every piece of medieval or antique crap is worth picturing !! and a crannog is a very old fort in a swamp or a lake... isn't it ?

So here is the crannog entrance
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and from the ground
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and a couple of views of the inside....
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Hope you enjoy it !

Great stuff, thanks. It just goes to show that I can still be surprised. I had quite a stereotyped image of what a crannog would look like, and the Loch Tay one matched that, but this is low, with the living space actually forming solid ground under foot, and not too far offshore. The Palisade doesn't look as strong as I'd expected either, but then there would be differences between the Scottish and Irish versions.

Perhaps the Highland storms had something to do with the platform being on 'stilts'. The low Irish version would be washed out fairly quickly.
A crannog is a man made island in a swamp or loch bult to support a dwelling, probably more with defence against wild animals in mind, though the stilted version would be a bit more defendable against attack my man. A few later supported atone castles, such as Eilan Rossdhu or Inch Galbraith in Loch Lomond.
Posssibly both and other variations occurred locally too.

wow...those are amazing Fred...I'm really glad you like posting here.

Yes those are great pics. Do Crannogs sometimes have boarding ladders for small boats or canoes so the inhabitants can paddle accross the swamp to other parts of it...perhaps to a friend's Crannog for a pint?

I'm sure they did.

As far as i understood in Ireland, there was no such things as boarding ladders on the crannog itself.
THe boards on the lake (or swamp) would be held on solid ground, and the drinkin' pal would walk across the entrance bridge to have his beer.
Drinking bars near the ports will come later on history

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And i believe the difference may not be so solid between irish and scottish crannogs, but there was probably as many differents crannogs as crannog builders, depending on the water depth and the expected number of inhabitants (clan members). Probably both examples in Tay and Craggaunowen are likely to have existed anywhere accross ireland, scotland england wlaes or France... anywhere there were crannogs.

Hey Fred...got to hand it to you...your English is still very good! Where as mon français très mal...but you knew that.

Hmmm so they walked from Crannog to Crannogon boards accross the swamp? Interesting. Perhaps the swamps weren't deep enough to warrant an actual boat? As far as differences between Crannogs go, when they were in use accross trhe area, was there even such a thing as Ireland, England, Scotland and Wales? I mean were there actual country names and borders anyway at the time? Seems like just people trying to get a foot in the ground no matter where.

You are right !
i named the actual countries who are known to have had a celtic (gaelic or brittonic) population likely to buld Crannogs... but probably those nations were very far to be!!

And for the boat used, my latest post had a pic with an iron age boat by side of the Crannog... and yes, water doesnt have to be very deep.


And Laureen... my english is sure not that good i couldnt even spell Wales properly !!
I really need some practice (more when i'm talking) before i loose it all... i'll be calling you

I agree, i'm sure there were variations in Crannog design from site to site and that there were no national 'templates'. Just like castles they would have adapted the design to the site and their need.
As a point of interest there is evidence that some crannogs were in use into medieval times in the highlands, before eventually being replaced by stone castles. There are crannog sites throughout Scotland, not just in the highlands, but through the central belt and down to the borders. Some, rather than having a wooden walkway, seem to have had a causeway, just far enough below the surface of the water to be difficult to spot, these could have dog-legs and were rarely straight, so that anyone unfamiliar with the route, would easily stray into deeper water.

Yeah that seems like a simple and effective defense all right. Now how about the problem of Finding a specific one, like an address or something. Surely there was a way to tell who built each Crannog or a marking to identify it or to what clan it belongs to? Maybe that's just lost info....

From Wikipedia:

Armit identifies the islet of Eilean Domhnuill, Loch Olabhat on North Uist, Scotland as what may be the earliest crannog. Unstan ware pottery found there suggests a Neolithic period date of 3200-2800 BC. A surrounding timber screen and the turf-walled houses seem to have been repeatedly taken down and rebuilt, and in the final phase two oblong stone-footed structures bear a resemblance to Knap of Howar.


Knap of Howar:

At Knap of Howar on the Orkney island of Papa Westray, a Neolithic farmstead has been wonderfully well preserved, and is claimed to be the oldest preserved stone house in northern Europe, with radiocarbon dating showing that it was occupied from 3500 BC to 3100 BC, earlier than the very similar houses in the settlement at Skara Brae.

The farmstead consists of two adjacent rounded rectangular thick walled buildings with very low doorways facing to sea, the larger and older linked by a low passageway to the other which has been interpreted as a workshop or a second house. They were constructed on an earlier midden, and surrounded by midden material which has protected them. There are no windows, and they were presumably lit by a hole in the roof to let out smoke. They stand close to the shore, but when originally built lay inland.

The walls still stand to an eaves height of 1.6m, and the stone furniture is intact giving a vivid impression of life in the house. Fireplaces, partition screens, beds and storage shelves are almost intact, and post holes were found indicating the roof structure.

Evidence from the middens shows that the inhabitants were keeping cattle, sheep and pigs, cultivating barley and wheat and gathering shellfish as well as fishing for species which have to be line caught using boats.

Finds of finely made and decorated Unstan ware pottery link the inhabitants to chambered cairn tombs nearby and to sites far afield including Balbrindie and Eilean Domhnuill.

I guess they had no problems of address and "who lives here?" as the density of population certainly was far smaller than today. More, most crannogs inhabitants would live on themselves, with a very restricted notion of trade.
You knew who lived in the Crannogs nearby by meating them. So you dont need their names on the door. And for the others, they just are "strangers", and you would not event think of writing them.

I think home-delivery service was not yet a very interesting market during iron age !!

Yeah and no block parties either for that matter..... Still, in later years still pre-stone castle, wouldn't have people in areas joined together into clans for unified protection from invaders from other areas? Were there not leaders and a loosely formed society like a "town" or did that sort of thing happen on more solid earth areas where actual towns did exist and tthe crannogs were like rural settlements?

Undoubtedly, since clan is simply a term for family.

Well two possibilities :
either such structures arose from the reunion of differerent famillies (and different crannogs)
from 1 familly that grew big enough to become a clan... the village (and then the castle) being an extention of the Crannog growing bigger ... and then probably the swamp getting dried to gain free and cultivable land.

(you certainly have guessed i thought the second solution more likely to happen - but once again, history certainly made both ways, and probably other ways we didnt even think of!)

And er... what is a block party ???

American term for a neighborhood get together...people from around the "block".

There's a theory that Clans developed from an extended family originally consisting of all those with a common grandfather, eventually when surnames developed this extended to a single common ancestor, hence the 'Macs', became clans, mac meaning son of, so the mac Donalds, were descended from the sons on donald, Mac Dougall from the sons of Dougall, Mac Ruari and so on. These 3 were of course all descended from the sons of Somerled.
Phrasing it properly, if my family hadn't adopted English language christian names and an Anglo-norman surname, the style would properly present me as Gordon MacThomas MacWilliam MacAndrew MacWilliam MacWilliam MacAndrew ....and then the Mason on the end would spoil it, but you'll get the gist!
When surnames were adopted they basically dropped the middle bits to show common ancestry and loyalties.
Given the preliterary tradition of oral recitation of history and geneology, a seneschal of a clan chief in times of old would probably in such manner be able to recite the geneology back to that common ancestor, and probably beyond, I can only trace back as 1835.
The Normans used a similar system, the prefix being Fitz, the Vikings used the suffix son, so Magnus- son, or daughter, and the Welsh version of Mac was ap, the Irish O', as in son O'Donnel.

Mac is also found in Irish...though I suspect there is some "Scottish" in it...My last name is Mac...Scots usually recognize it immediately as Irish yet they also tell me I have a tartan etc....actually...2 tartans...one for the clan and one for the region or town or something.

Yup, the Irish also use Mac, mainly because of the common language root, partly because of scottish 'colonisation' of Ulster.

And that the Gaelic went from what we know as Scotland now to Ireland so a language similarity would exist.

Actually, I do believe my family name does go back to Ulster

Ralph has it back to front, but he knows that and is just trying to prompt a response from me!
At an early date Celtic language diversified into two forms, P-Celtic, and Q Celtic, Q-Celtic being the earlier version.
These are based on slight changes in the phonetics. The p-Celtic forms included Brittonic & Pictish and modern Welsh derives from it, and it was the Language group of the Britons, of the modern areas known as Scotland/ England/ Wales/ Cornwall & Brittanny.
Q Celtic was the Irish form including Scots Gaelic, Irish, Manx and the now extinct Celtibrian from Spain. It was introduced to the west highlands of Scotland by the migration of the Scots from Ireland. The rise to prominence of Kenneth MacAlpine (a Scot) in the 9thc when he became King of Alba, was the begining of the end of the Pictish Language, and the Britons of Strathclyde were eventually amalgamated into what had become Scotland, and so Q Celtic became the dominant language form in the highlands, and Scots, a form of Northumbrian English, the dominant language in the lowlands, since the Northumbrian kingdom was Anglian and extended to the Firth of Forth on the east.
The best way to remember the difference is in the prefix Mac, which in Welsh is Map. The Q of Q-Celtic indicating a K sound, while the P-Celtic uses a P.
Here's a link to a slightly less basic explanation http://www.maryjones.us/jce/qceltic.html

There are other differences in letter use, for instance Ewan Mac Ewan in Gaelic would be Owen Map Owen in Welsh.

yes ! that's what i call a clear and brilliant answer !
thanx alot for the point, Gordon.

thats interesting...nice post G.

Yes good post!