What is recorded here

Shore Island is a submerged crannog in Lough Rea where excavations revealed basket-work floors, hearths and animal bones beneath the water. Kinahan mapped oak piles and stone masses along its edge in the 1860s, while a later dive identified a small artificial harbour at its northeast corner. The island may have been a working waterfront rather than a remote retreat, a place where people built, cooked and lived beside the lake.

In the W sector of Lough Rea c. 20m from the shoreline. This irregularly shaped island (c. 90m E-W; c. 5-35m N-S) was formerly attached to the mainland by a causeway of marl and peat. On examining it Kinahan (1861-4, 416-17) noted masses of stones between and outside two semicircles of oak piles along the shoreline at NE and from E to S. About 20m to the S of the island three circles of piles were also visible. During the course of a series of excavations undertaken on the E half of the island a basket-work floor, basket-work partitions, hearths and numerous animal bones were uncovered (ibid., 717-24). A dive over the oak piles noted to the NE of the island in the late 1990s found them to be part of an artificially constructed small harbour or docking area (information from K. McDonald). (Wood-Martin 1886, 225-9) Compiled by: Galway Archaeological Survey, UCG Date of upload: 8 January 2020

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