Digging through time on bogs of Tyrrellspass

Before the start of the lecture ‘Dispatches from the debris fields’, committee member of Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society, Seamus O’Brien, expresses his hopes for good turnout. As the 8pm start time arrived a couple of extra chairs were sourced to accommodate the guests filing into the Belvedere Room in The Greville Arms Hotel.

It’s an appropriate location for a historic lecture; right across the hall is the hotel museum, a repository of memorabilia featuring items related to James Joyce’s time in the county town.

Since its 1978 inception, Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society has endeavoured to foster an appreciation of the heritage of the county, and one of the tools to do that is inviting guest lecturers to impart information to bring local history to life.

Michael Stanley’s illustrated lecture on Toar Bog is a fine example of how that happens. At the talk last Wednesday week, the archaeologist discussed the excavations he oversaw on Toar Bog some 25 years ago.

It’s delivered to a mature audience, perhaps an indication that an appreciation of heritage comes with time. The lecture attracted people from all over the county. The handshakes and greetings of ‘how are you keeping’ suggest many are familiar with one another.

‘Dispatches from the debris fields: the late prehistoric and early medieval archaeology of Toar Bog’ condensed two and a half millennia of activity on the Tyrrellspass wetland into a one hour and five minute of fascinating insights.

Unsurprisingly, the night was the Archaeological and Historical Society’s first event of 2026. The subject matter covers the formative part of who we are and where we come from. Toar Bog first came to archaeological attention in 1946 when a stone axehead was found by turf cutters.

Further artefact discoveries were made in the ensuing decades – a bronze spearhead, a wooden scoop, and a bronze dirk – but the true scale of the archaeology therein would not be exposed until Bord na Móna began industrial peat extraction in the 1980s.

At that stage, the state body was well established in the mechanisation of the harvesting of peat, turning the vast midlands bogs into brown fields as machines scooped up the landscape for burning in power stations.

It was part of an evolution that saw the Turf Development Board (TDB), established by the Irish state in 1934, and transformed into Bord na Móna in 1946. Toar bog is just a tiny fraction of the 77,000 hectares owned by Bord na Móna.

Having identified hundreds of previously undocumented wooden structures and deposits in Toar Bog, the Heritage Service, Dúchas, arranged a survey of the site in the summer of 2000. That was 20 years after the commencement of the peat stripping had begun. Michael Stanley was over that survey, and even two and a half decades later his bubbling enthusiasm for his specialist subjects is apparent.

“I started my archaeological career as a wetland archaeologist,” he told the Westmeath Examiner, “I was mostly working in Bord na Móna bogs. From about 1999 to 2005, I worked with a specialist fieldwork unit called the Irish Archaeological Wetland Unit and they were based in University College Dublin.”

Dúchas choice of Toar Bog was an extension of a significant world heritage find in a neighbouring county in previous decades: “They were building on the work of Professor Barry Raftery and the excavations he did in County Longford.”

Professor Raftery was one of Ireland’s most distinguished archaeologists. He is best known for his pioneering contributions to the understanding of the Irish Iron Age, wetland archaeology and prehistoric hill forts.

His research transformed how scholars and the public view later prehistoric Ireland. His work on Corlea Trackway was one of the largest archaeological conservation projects in Ireland at the time.

“It was only when Barry did his work in those excavations that they started looking at the general bog area. They started finding sites, hundreds of them, in the bogs, which were previously unknown. The significance of Corlaigh 1 was that it was scientifically proven to be Iron Age,” Michael said.

There was a growing belief at that time that bogs were more than just brown fields that could be burned: “In 1990, the Wetland Unit was set up. Its brief was simple. It was to go into all the Bord na Móna bogs it could and to survey those bogs, identify archaeology, record it and then that archaeology or the records of that archaeology would be sent to the Sites and Monuments Record, which is the state archive for new sites and unknown sites in the country.

“As wetland discoveries came up around the country, we were tasked with going down and investigating them and retrieving artefacts. For instance, if Bord na Móna workers hit upon a bog butter or perhaps a find in a private bog, like the old Old Croghan Man in County Offaly, we would go and investigate those kinds of finds.”

The mention of Old Croghan Man, the well-preserved Irish Iron Age bog body found in June 2003, and Corlea Bog hint at the importance of these bog finds – finds right on our doorstep that shed invaluable light on human history.

The lecture to the Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society is also about shedding light: “I’m going back to the work I used to do to leverage the knowledge we gained from that survey. A lot of those sites, even as we were recording, were being destroyed by the milling. Then, over the years, a lot more was milled away.”

Though the peat, and what it hid, may now be milled and burned, the information of the survey is still in the possession of Bord na Móna: “That survey archive still has value. What I’ve tried to do, or what I’m trying to start to do tonight, is look at the survey results from summer 2000 when we found over 400 archaeological sites, previously undocumented archaeological sites in that bog.”

When the general public think about archaeology, the image of people in trenches, springs to mind. The slides in Michael’s lectures show many pictures of field workers in that environment; however, there is another side to archaeology that many people miss: data.

In 2005 and 2006, about 38 sites were subject to archaeological excavation commissioned by Bord na Móna and sanctioned by the National Monuments Service and the National Museum of Ireland. That was part of their mitigation strategy: “Over the course of two summer seasons, they excavated 38 sites. What I’m essentially trying to do is stitch together those two different data sets.

“This data still has lots of value, it still has a lot to tell us. There’s still a lot about that data set we don’t quite know or understand or haven’t investigated deeply. This data still exists and it’s important data that people should be looking at.

“At present, this data isn’t freely available to people, beyond specialists or professional audiences. It hasn’t been published, so while some work has gone into making people aware that it’s happened, there is no tactical report.”

The importance of wetlands to human development on the island of Ireland is immense. From the Mesolithic period to modern day, humans have had a deep connection with bogs.

Many early examples of human habitation are preserved because of the nature of bogs: “A lot of material in the National Museum of Ireland has come from wetlands. Some of the really important metal work has come from wetlands. One thing to stress about the wetlands is that a lot of organic material – wood, leather, fabric, bog butter and even human remains – has been preserved in the wetland context, so it gives a much fuller picture of the past.”

Michael says there are more to bogs than just the ancient heritage: “There’s also a modern heritage there. Bord na Móna had a huge impact on the social history of every midland county. From the earliest times to the very recent past, bogs are filled with heritage and regardless of what we happen to be choosing to do with them at any one time, I think we need to be mindful of that heritage and to protect it.”

By facilitating Michael Stanley’s lecture on Toar Bog, the Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society continue their goal of breathing life into history. Seamus O’Brien says the appetite for such events is growing: “We’ve been at this now for about 40 years and over the last number of years we’ve got bigger and bigger crowds to come out.

“Heritage, if left to its own devices, will not survive. It really needs people to nourish it, to support it, to research it, to write about it and to celebrate it. This lecture, and the conference coming up at Easter, our workshop in October, the publishing of our own journal, our outings for heritage week in August, all those things get the message out to get people interested,” Seamus said.

The increasing public engagement around heritage issues is something Seamus believes is building: “Once you present good, high quality lectures and conferences, people will come out. For some, it may be perceived as boring, but as you can tell by the turnout here that is not the case.”

The society also offers an opportunity to bring people with a common interest together: “There is a social element to it, chatting over a cup of tea and meeting other people at the lecture, meeting the lecturers themselves in the flesh. You will not get an experience like that online or from artificial intelligence.”

Michael Stanley’s illustrated lecture ‘Dispatches from the debris fields’ was hosted by Westmeath Archaeological and Historical Society at the Greville Arms Hotel, Mullingar on Wednesday January 28, 2026.