lough na crannagh

The custom of building lake-dwellings or crannogs may have started with the Mesolithic hunters and food-gatherers who arrived in Ireland 9,000 years ago, though no example excavated so far has been dated earlier than the Bronze Age. Most in fact appear to belong to the Early Christian period, and doubtless many were inhabited well into Medieval times and beyond. Lough-na-Crannagh, a small limpid lake cradled in a hollow on the summit of Fair Head on the north Antrim coast, contains perhaps the finest walled crannog in the country. Its remarkably well preserved state may be the result of its one-time remoteness, but it is also likely that it was occupied until very late on and could have seen several phases of reconstruction at the hands of successive newcomers. The secluded situation is typical of the dispersed settlement pattern of Celtic Ireland and the site would have been an attractive one down the centuries.