Craggaunowen

Craggaunowen ( Irish: Creagán Eoghain ) is a small village in Kilmurry, near Quin, 16 km east of Ennis, in County Clare in Ireland. Here are a few scattered farmsteads within an old castle and the road signs of the Shannon Heritage Ltd.. with the inscription: Craggaunowen Megalithic Centre.

Craggaunowen Megalithic Centre

The Centre is an attempt to bring to life Ireland's past. For this purpose, cabins, hunting camps and on piles were reconstructed from prehistoric times and the castle Craggaunowen Castle around. In addition to a series of lakes to find a restored Crannog as a circular near-shore island. The result was an open air museum.

The idea came from John Hunt ( † 1976), an art-historical consultant of the auction house Sotheby's, which had a profound knowledge of the history of the Middle Ages in Europe. He bought the land in Craggaunowen, restored the Castle and began with the establishment of a museum whose core components are a so-called Crannog, and a ring fort.

Craggaunowen Castle

The castle was built around 1550 by John MacNamara MacSioda and is a classic residential tower, which then usual abode of the landed gentry. After the collapse of the old social order by the defeat against the troops of Oliver Cromwell 1649-52 the castle in the 17th century was abandoned and fell into disrepair.

The restoration began in the early 19th century under the direction of Tom Steele. The work was only in 1965, completed by the antiquarian John Hunt, who also prompted the cultivation of the ground floor.

The Stilt

Crannogs are artificial islands in the shallow area of lakes or marshland or on natural islands, on which the people of the Iron Age to the early Christian period cottages built, whose primary purpose is probably in the cultic area. There was already partly in the Bronze Age Crannogs and some were used and inhabited until the 17th century. This crannog is the reconstruction of a non-existent site pile dwellings, as he was particularly common in the North West of Ireland. Crannogs are also found in Scotland and brought up there with the Picts in conjunction.

The construction

The foundation formed several layers of stones, and bushes, which was sunk in the lake. The interview was with circular wooden stakes driven into the ground his grip, which limit the filled with earth and sand platform. Within a picket fence builders erected huts made of wattle and daub. A number Crannogs is within sight of other prehistoric structures such as megaliths.

You could achieve the artificial islands in shallow water on foot, by canoe or on dams and bridges, which excludes that they served the defense.

The ring fort

In Ireland there are 84,425 km ² almost 40,000 ring forts that are locally also called Dun or Rath different. This type of pre-Christian times, also reached the West of Scotland.

Within the Palisade residents went to unusual pursuits. These plants are also explained only as a precursor of Christian monasteries. Their number is so great because they went out of use after a certain period and were replaced by often immediately adjacent successor.

Such a so-called ring fort was the center of the then local social life.

The " Brendan "

Probably the most speculative object of the entire system is certainly the " Brendan ", a named after St. Brendan Curragh, in which Timothy Severin in 1976 sailed from Ireland to North America.

In a manuscript entitled " Navigatio Sancti Brendani Abbatis " is described that St. Brandan discovered on a journey from the Emerald Isle of the land beyond the Atlantic. The presentation is, however, questioned scientifically. Severin wanted to prove that this was not fiction from the 9th century and was build a boat made ​​of leather, which allegedly with his ash wood frame could even defy the drift. With stopovers on the Aran Islands, the Hebrides and the Faroe Islands, he came to Iceland, where he wintered. In June 1977 he reached Canada, and had thus proved that it at least gave the opportunity to reach in this way the North American continent.

Later, Hunt handed over the complex to the Irish people.