Blake's Island

Blake's Island vanished beneath Lough Rea by 1986, leaving only a buoy to mark where a rectangular patch of land once sat ninety-five metres from the shore. George Henry Kinahan suspected in 1862 that the submerged shape was a crannog, a defensible homestead built from timber and stone to keep unannounced visitors at bay. The water may have claimed the structure through settlement or rising levels, but the lake still holds the skeleton of a place designed to resist the world.