What is a crannóg?

A crannóg is a dwelling built in a lake or bog, either on stilts or on a man-made island. Crannógs are found all over Scotland and Ireland - the links below include some excavations and rebuilt crannógs in Scotland. People chose to build this way for a number of reasons, safety and wise use of arable land being presumably tops on the list. Island crannógs were often reached by causeways hidden just below the surface of the water, providing a safe but secret access. Such dwellings could house both a family and their livestock.

We at Crannóg Ales tend to emphasize the latter reason for building crannógs: the wise use of arable land. Much of the land in Scotland and Ireland is either extremely thin and rocky, or boggy ­ neither of which are great for growing food or grazing much livestock. It is only sensible, therefore, to build your home on land that cannot be used to grow your food, saving arable land for its best purpose. This is a lesson which contemporary Western societies - especially here in Canada - would do well to learn. If we continue to pave our best arable land, we will be unable to grow food. We cannot eat concrete, nor can we live off food from poorer countries. If we are going to have a sustainable future, we must protect our food lands, and the skills of our farmers.

The term Crannóg refers to small artificial islands which can be found in the majority of Scotland's lochs and inland waters. From the surface, most crannógs look like uninteresting mounds of stone, from which timbers sometimes protrude. These small islands were constructed and occasionally lived on by people, as recently as the 17 th century. At the moment archaeologists believe that there are fundamentally two types of crannógs. One has a solid base and is literally an island, the other is a type of raised structure, such as a stilt house or large dock. This later type stood above the water and was substantially taller.

A quote from Mark Holley's Crannog research

Crannógs are lake or lakeside settlements which were inhabited from the Mesolithic to the Early Medieval period. The name is derived from the Irish word crann, meaning a tree. Originally the term may have been applied to the timber palisades which surrounded such sites, the timber buildings within them, or the timber foundations on which they were erected. The same name is used in Scotland, where similar sites occur.

From the Stonepages, a website dedicated to research on megaliths all over Ireland, Scotland and Europe, including a great page on the Craggaunowen site (pictured at left), at which a crannóg has been built.

Also check out the Scottish Crannóg Centre website, home of a hand-built crannóg at Oakbank, in Loch Tay, Scotland. This page may be under construction, but when it's up, there are wonderful pictures of building the crannóg, plus very informative background material on the history, locations and building methods of crannógs in general.