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Crannog in Mullaghmonaghan

Crannog

What is recorded here

Situated at the centre of Convent Lake, which was called Spark’s Lake (OS 1834). This is a subrectangular lake (dims c. 180m NW-SE; c. 150m NE-SW) in Monaghan town, and it is c. 500m SW of the town centre. A map of 1591 depicts Macmahoon’s house on an island in the lake (Mooney 1957, Pl. 12), but one of Bartlett’s map…

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Situated at the centre of Convent Lake, which was called Spark’s Lake (OS 1834). This is a subrectangular lake (dims c. 180m NW-SE; c. 150m NE-SW) in Monaghan town, and it is c. 500m SW of the town centre. A map of 1591 depicts Macmahoon’s house on an island in the lake (Mooney 1957, Pl. 12), but one of Bartlett’s map of 1602-03, which has been thought to depict this crannog (O’Sullivan 1998, Pl. 58) is a representation of Roosky Lake (pers. comm. Grace Moloney 2012) with its two crannogs (MO012-050----; MO012-051----). This crannog is likely to have been the ‘caislean’ or castle of Mac Mahon mentioned in 1492 (AU; AFM). It is now a subcircular overgrown mound (dims 16m N-S; 14m E-W; H 0.7m), and erosion on the N and W shores reveals a matrix of boulders (dims c. 0.2-0.3m). The tops of four oak piles can be seen on the N side. The mound shelves off into deep water within 3-4m and a boulder kerb can be seen beneath the water. (Smyth 1954, 4) The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Monaghan' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1986). See the attached image of the 1591 map showing the Franciscan abbey and Macmahoon's house on the crannog, after Mooney 1957, Pl. 2 Date of revision: 13 December 2017

From the National Monuments Service (Archaeological Survey of Ireland) record MO009-037

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Photo credits
  • National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
  • Andreas F. Borchert, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0
  • Brian Lenehan, Geograph · Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0
  • Raymond Okonski, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Brian Lenehan, Geograph · CC BY-SA 2.0
  • Andreas F. Borchert, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 3.0 de
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