Bog covers about 12,000 km² of the island. It fuelled Irish fires and power stations, and it kept what fell into it: bodies two thousand years old, a book of Psalms, butter, roads of oak.
Ireland has about 12,000 km² of bog, of two distinct kinds: raised bog and blanket bog. There is also a modest amount of surviving fen, a related landform.
Raised bogs are found mostly in the Shannon basin and the Midlands. They began as lakes left behind after the Ice Age; reeds and plant debris filled the lakes until peat rose above the water and kept rising in a dome, fed only by rain. That is where the name comes from.
Blanket bogs are thinner and spread across whole hillsides in the wet, cloudy west and on the mountains. In Ireland they are partly a product of people: they formed where Neolithic farmers cleared trees, the soil leached and turned acid, and heather and rushes took over. One of the largest expanses of Atlantic blanket bog in Ireland is in County Mayo.
Peat cut and dried for the fire is called turf, and it has been cut by hand for centuries. Machines arrived in the 1940s and Bord na Móna, set up under the Turf Development Act 1946, milled the Midland bogs for power stations. Raised bogs suffered most because they give a better fuel. In 2020 Bord na Móna announced it was phasing out peat harvesting.
A dome of peat fed only by rain, poor in minerals and acid. Formed over former lakes, mostly in the Midlands and the Shannon basin. Wikipedia's Raised bog article cites an estimate that the Republic holds 50% of the relatively intact oceanic raised bog left in Europe. Wikipedia ↗
A thinner layer of peat that blankets undulating ground where rainfall is high and evaporation low: the west coast and the uplands. In parts of Europe its spread is traced to prehistoric forest clearance. Wikipedia ↗
Sources: Geography of Ireland ↗ · Raised bog ↗ · Blanket bog ↗ · Bord na Móna ↗
Protection status is as the National Parks and Wildlife Service (NPWS) lists it for the Republic, or as the site's Wikipedia article gives it for Northern Ireland. A Special Area of Conservation (SAC) is protected under the EU Habitats Directive.
Raised bog · Co. Offaly
One of the largest relatively intact raised bogs left in Ireland, between Ballycumber and Clara. A road built across it in the late 18th century split it into two domes, and it sank up to six metres. Clara Bog East was drained for peat in the early 1980s before a campaign, with the Dutch government's help from 1987, stopped the work and blocked the drains. It sat on Ireland's UNESCO tentative list until 2009, when the candidacy was withdrawn because peat cutting had damaged it.
Raised bog · Co. Offaly
A raised bog whose qualifying habitats are active raised bog, degraded raised bog still capable of regeneration, and Rhynchosporion depressions. With Clara, it is twinned with the Dutch Bargerveen reserve.
Raised bog · Co. Offaly
East of Clonmacnoise, it began to form about 9,000 years ago between two eskers. Machines drained parts of it in the 1970s, and Wikipedia credits the damage with starting the movement that went on to save other Irish bogs. It was once important for wintering Greenland white-fronted geese.
Raised bog · Co. Offaly
NPWS lists active raised bog and bog woodland among its qualifying habitats, the same set as Clara. We found no Wikipedia article on it, so this entry has only the NPWS record behind it.
Raised bog · Co. Laois
Also called Killamuck Bog. The project manages 500 acres, including about 100 hectares of raised bog it describes as degraded but improving. Turf was cut here until the mid-20th century. An old railway line is now a raised walking trail joined to a volunteer-built boardwalk.
Raised bog · Co. Offaly, Co. Meath, Co. Kildare, Co. Laois, Co. Westmeath
A raised bog of 958 km² between the Liffey and the Shannon, crossed by the Grand and Royal Canals, with kilometres of narrow-gauge industrial railway built for the turf. Milling has turned up prehistoric and medieval wooden trackways. The Irish Peatland Conservation Council calls it "as much a part of Irish natural heritage as the Book of Kells."
Blanket bog · Co. Mayo
The park has 150 km² of Atlantic blanket bog, one of the largest expanses of peatland left in Europe. It opened as Ballycroy National Park on 1 November 1998 and was enlarged and renamed Wild Nephin in 2018. Wikipedia says the Owenduff is the only river in Western Europe that still drains a relatively intact, extensive blanket bog system.
Blanket bog · Co. Mayo
In the second half of the 20th century Bellacorick had a turf-fired power station, fed by about 20,000 acres of bog that Bord na Móna bought. Its cooling towers were demolished on 14 October 2007. The bog complex is protected for its blanket bog, fens and the rare marsh saxifrage.
Wikipedia ↗ · Wikipedia ↗ · NPWS SAC 001922 ↗ · NPWS SAC 000466 ↗
Blanket bog · Co. Mayo
NPWS lists blanket bog alongside sea cliffs, dunes and machair among its qualifying habitats in north Mayo. We found no Wikipedia article on the bog itself.
Blanket bog · Co. Mayo
Stone-walled fields, houses and tombs preserved under blanket bog on the north Mayo coast, with more than 100 km of buried wall estimated. Patrick Caulfield, a schoolteacher, noticed stones under the turf in the 1930s; his son Seamus later investigated them. The site is usually dated to the Neolithic, the fourth millennium BCE. That is disputed: Andrew Whitefield has argued parts may be comparable to later Bronze Age or Iron Age field systems.
Blanket bog · Co. Cavan, Co. Leitrim, Co. Fermanagh
A mountain of sandstone and shale covered with bog and heather on the Cavan–Fermanagh border, the highest point of both counties. Fermanagh District Council opened the Cuilcagh Mountain Park in 1998. Water from its southern slope runs underground to the Shannon Pot, the traditional source of the Shannon.
Raised bog · Co. Londonderry
One of the largest lowland raised bogs in Northern Ireland, south of Maghera. Planning permission for peat milling was granted in 1988. Local campaigners and Friends of the Earth then won ASSI status for the bog. The Ramsar listing calls it one of the two largest intact active bogs in Northern Ireland.
18 bodies found on the island of Ireland are listed in Wikipedia's List of bog bodies ↗, from a Neolithic skeleton to a woman whose cloak and radiocarbon date disagree by centuries. 13 are dated; the earliest finds were made in the 18th and 19th centuries, and several of those bodies no longer survive. Where a body's own article gives a different date range from the list, both are shown.
| Name | County | Dated to | Found |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stoneyisland Man A Neolithic skeleton found by turf-cutters at Gortanumera. The List of bog bodies calls him Ireland's oldest known bog body. Only the bones survive, and he was first taken for a man recently gone missing. Article ↗ · List ↗ |
Galway | 3320–3220 BCE | 1929 |
| Cashel Man Found on 10 August 2011 by Bord na Móna worker Jason Phelan in Cashel Bog, between Portlaoise and Abbeyleix. He was aged about 20–25 and buried crouched, with hazel rods nearby. Early Bronze Age. His article calls him the earliest body found in Ireland with preserved soft tissue, which fits with Stoneyisland Man being older but only a skeleton. Article ↗ · List ↗ |
Laois | c. 2000 BCE article: 2141–1960 BCE |
2011 |
| Derrycashel Woman A nearly complete skeleton of a young woman, read as a formal burial rather than a sacrifice. List ↗ |
Roscommon | 1431–1291 BCE | 2005 |
| Derrymaquirk Woman Aged about 25; fragments of infant bone were found nearby. Read as a formal burial. List ↗ |
Roscommon | 750–200 BCE | 1959 |
| Gallagh Man Found by turf-cutters near Castleblakeney, about three metres down, pinned by two wooden stakes with a willow withy round his neck and a deerskin cape. For eight years the landowning O'Kelly family dug him up to show paying visitors and buried him again. Article ↗ · List ↗ |
Galway | 400–200 BCE article: c. 470–120 BC |
1821 |
| Clonycavan Man Found on 21 February 2003 on a screen at Bord na Móna's Ballivor works. His raised hairstyle was set with plant oil and pine resin from south-west France or northern Spain. His find and Old Croghan Man's led the National Museum to set up its Bog Bodies Research Project. Article ↗ · List ↗ |
Meath | 392–201 BCE | 2003 |
| Old Croghan Man Found in 2003 near Croghan Hill (his article says June; the Clonycavan Man article says May). Only the torso and arms survive. He was stabbed, beheaded and cut in two. Researchers have linked his death to Iron Age kingship ritual, but his article stresses that this is a hypothesis. He is on display at the National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street. Article ↗ · List ↗ |
Offaly | 362–175 BCE | 2003 |
| Ballymacombs More Woman A headless skeleton with surviving skin, nails and a kidney, first investigated as a possible recent murder. Reported as "Bellaghy Boy", it was reclassified in 2025 as a woman aged 17–22. List ↗ |
Londonderry | c. 300 BCE | 2023 |
| Kinakinelly Man Found with red deer bones. List ↗ |
Galway | 200–100 BCE | 1952 |
| Derryvarroge Man Only the buttocks and a leg survive. List ↗ |
Kildare | 228–343 CE | 2006 |
| Baronstown West Man Wrapped in a textile and leather cloak, with hazel or birch branches. List ↗ |
Kildare | 242–388 CE | 1953 |
| Cloonshannagh Woman Completely skeletonised; body and clothing damaged by peat-cutting tools. List ↗ |
Roscommon | 645–680 CE | 2005 |
| Meenybradden Woman The dates disagree: radiocarbon dating gives the medieval date shown, but the cloak wrapped round her is in a 16th–17th-century style. List ↗ |
Donegal | 1050–1410 CE | 1978 |
The list includes Northern Ireland counties under "Ireland", as we do here. We cannot confirm it is complete. The National Museum of Ireland's own pages turned down our requests, so we could not check the list against them.
Co. Tipperary · Found July 2006; written about 800 CE
A book of Psalms in Latin, on 60 sheets of vellum, found in a bog in the townland of Faddan More in north Tipperary. Bernard Meehan of Trinity College Library said he believed it was the first early medieval Irish manuscript discovered in two centuries. Conservators found its leather cover lined with papyrus, which some have suggested points to links with the Coptic churches. On display at the National Museum, Kildare Street, since June 2011.
Buried in Ireland from the 1st century AD
Butter or other fat sealed in wooden containers and buried in bogs. Some tested lumps are dairy and others animal fat. Why it was buried is unclear; keeping food from spoiling is one theory. In 2011 about 50 kg was found in Tullamore, County Offaly, in a carved wooden vessel 2.3 m down, still smelling faintly of dairy. The earliest Irish examples cited are from County Meath.
Co. Longford · Built 148–147 BC
An Iron Age oak road across the bog near Keenagh, known locally as the Danes' Road, dated by tree rings to timber felled in late 148 or early 147 BC. Excavations led by Barry Raftery found 59 trackways in about 125 hectares of Corlea bog by 1991, and more since. Bord na Móna's peat cutting had exposed them.
A raised bog is a dome of peat, often several metres deep, that grew up out of an old lake and is fed only by rain. Raised bogs are mostly in the Midlands. A blanket bog is a thinner layer that covers whole hillsides in the wet west and on the mountains; in Ireland many formed after Neolithic farmers cleared the forest. Ireland has about 12,000 km² of the two together.
Wikipedia's List of bog bodies gives Stoneyisland Man, found in County Galway in 1929 and dated to 3320–3220 BCE, but he survives only as a skeleton. Cashel Man, found in County Laois in 2011 and dated to around 2000 BCE, is described as the earliest found in Ireland with preserved soft tissue.
Old Croghan Man and Clonycavan Man are on display at the National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology on Kildare Street in Dublin, according to their Wikipedia articles. The Faddan More Psalter has been shown there since 2011.
Bord na Móna announced in 2020 that it was phasing out peat harvesting, and Wikipedia says the peat-fired power stations had all closed by 2020. Cutting turf by hand for the home fire still goes on, and has been a long-running dispute on bogs protected as Special Areas of Conservation.
Each bog, body and find above links its own sources as well. Wikipedia text is CC BY-SA 4.0. Read October 2026.
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