McAWilliams Photoblog

Yep another shot from the maritime festival of one of the ropes used to moor one of the tall ships to the dock.

Lesson 4 from the Irish National heritage park brings us to some very early dwellings known as a crannog. A crannóg is an ancient artificial island or natural island in Ireland, used for a settlement. The name may also refer to a wooden platform erected on shallow lough floors, but understandably few remains of this sort have been found. The name crannóg derives from crannoge, from Middle Irish crannóc, from Old Irish, from crann, tree.

The choice of an island as a home is thought to have been for defence and for the availability of food in the form of fish nearby. The crannog could be reached from the nearest shore by means of a causeway built up with stones, or a wooden gangway built atop raised piles.

I have one or two more pictures to put up from this fantastic visitor attraction, but I shall try not to continue giving lessons and let you enjoy the pictures instead.

Oh by the way that is Paula and Rebecca exiting the crannog after going in for a snooze.

All the above historical facts taken from Wikipedia.

History lesson number 3. This my dear visitors is a dolmen in the Irish National Heritage Park.

this quote from Wikipedia explains all.

A Dolmen is a type of single-chamber megalithic tomb, usually consisting of three or more upright stones (megaliths) supporting a large flat horizontal capstone (table). Most date from the early Neolithic period (4000 BC to 3000 BC). Dolmens were usually covered with earth or smaller stones to form a barrow, though in many cases that covering has weathered away, leaving only the stone ’skeleton’ of the burial mound intact.

The largest dolmen in Europe is the Browneshill Dolmen in County Carlow, Ireland. It’s capstone weighs about 150 tonnes.
For lesson 4 tomorrow I shall be teaching you all about Crannogs.

A lone chair sits in the middle the Irish National Heritage Park, its from the ikea era I think. More history tomorrow.

Sorry for the delay with this picture, but once again life has been mental.

This is a photograph from my workplace of one of the 5 casters I have on my trusty office chair.