by Richard Guest
Almost three years has passed since the inception of the NOSAS Crannogs project, one sunny post-lockdown afternoon sitting around my patio maintaining a 2-metre separation, unable to meet inside but mightily pleased to be chatting face to face instead of by zoom. Who had even heard of zoom before lockdown? We hatched a cunning plan – to search satellite images for islands which might prove to be unrecorded crannogs. Surely there must be lots of them, secreted away in remote glens where archaeologists rarely tread? Well, no, actually.
Movement was still restricted so there was no shortage of volunteers, happy to have something different to do at home, and we soon had plenty of islands to look at in the field. Some were explored in 2022 but by the start of 2023 we had a shortlist of very promising looking targets which certainly looked like crannogs from the shore. They would need snorkelling or diving around to check out their underwater credentials to be sure whether they really were artificial constructions. There was also the Loch Achilty crannog, which had been dived and surveyed in 2022 and where timbers had been found which could potentially be radiocarbon dated (see previous blog posts here and here).
Aside from crannogs, but continuing the underwater theme, I had spent two weeks in 2022 diving HMS Natal in the Cromarty Firth as part of a Nautical Archaeology Society project. So it was that Claire Hallybone from NAS came up to present the findings of the Natal project at a NOSAS “MAD” evening (that’s Monthly Archaeological Discussion for the uninitiated) and also to dive some real and potential crannogs with me.
It was early March and whilst the weather was conducive to a jolly evening chatting in Strathpeffer Hall, for diving – not so much. Nevertheless, we braved a chilly Loch Achilty and were successful in obtaining a timber sample from the shallower of two embedded timbers. It was surprisingly hard work. I made two parallel sawcuts in the edge of the wood and then tried to chisel out the bit in between with my knife but the wood was so hard I broke the tip off my knife. Eventually the sample was obtained but it took about 40 minutes, by which time we were shivering with cold and both agreed one dive was enough for the day and the second, deeper timber would have to wait for another time.
The day after we headed for Loch Knockie where there were two small islands which looked dead ringers for crannogs. It was even colder and there was ice on the loch. Being brave (or foolhardy?) souls, we launched the canoes, skippered by James and Simon, and paddled out to the first island, which was ringed by ice. This proved to be thin enough to punch your hand through, so did not seem to be a safety issue, but it remains the one and only time I have dived under ice. Claire and I circumnavigated the island underwater but had to conclude that it was entirely natural. Moving over to the second island, which was close by, we repeated the process and came to the same conclusion, another natural island.
Being gluttons for punishment – or possibly because the sun was shining- after a warming flask of coffee we paddled to the far end of the loch, where there is a recorded crannog. The ice was thicker here and we had to use the canoes as icebreakers and I have to say they aren’t very good at it. We almost ground to a halt but managed to smash our way through. The recorded crannog was distinctly different, and it was easy to see it was man-made. It was tiny, and in very shallow water, no need to dive we just walked around it in the water.
The following day was Claire’s last day with us and we headed for Loch Sgamhain between Achnasheen and Loch Carron. No ice this time but it was much windier and sleet squalls were blowing down the loch from the west. It took us a while to decide whether it was safe to go, but eventually we did. We had a third diver with us, Andrew, and he magnanimously volunteered to stay on shore as safety cover to raise the alarm if we got into difficulty. Or was it just that he preferred to sit in a warm car….? With only James’s three-person canoe today we decided just to snorkel so that all three of us could paddle out together – taking heavy dive gear would have necessitated two trips. It was hard work paddling into the wind to reach the islands, once again there were two, close together. Claire and I swam around both, but to our disappointment they again turned out to be natural.
A month later, Andrew and I returned to Loch Achilty and were successful in obtaining a sample from the deeper of the two embedded timbers. This time, the problem was not the hardness of the wood but its fragility; it kept crumbling away and we had to be careful to achieve an intact sample.
Our next expedition was to another recorded crannog, Loch Morie in Easter Ross. Loch Morie lies in the next glen to Loch Glass, which we had dived in 2022 (see earlier blog post). Both lochs have a crannog in very similar positions, close to the outlet, so we expected to see some similarities. Loch Glass crannog was undoubtedly artificial and was quite large but appeared to be entirely built of stone with no timber to be seen. Roland had worked his charm on the landowner and obtained permission for us to drive up the estate road, so we bumped along the track one fine June morning and parked by the boathouse. Again, we only had James’s canoe, but the crannog looked reasonably close to shore so Andrew and I elected to swim out, whilst James ferried out Anne, David and Roland with the intention that they would survey the above water structure. Satellite images show an almost perfectly circular island, so neat it gives every impression of being man-made. Appearances can be deceptive.
The water where we entered was very shallow and we had to wade out a fair distance before it was deep enough to put our fins on and start swimming. I got one fin on and, using Andrew’s shoulder support, tried to put on the other. Instead, I fell over and splashed around like a beached whale, in water still too shallow to properly float until Andrew came to my rescue. I really am getting too old for all this!
The loch bed proved to consist of stones of all different sizes, from gravel right up to large boulders. It sloped gradually up until it broke surface at the (alleged) crannog, which itself consisted of the same mix of stone sizes. There was no break in slope to indicate an artificial mound. We swam all the way round and off into deeper water too, but there was no evidence of human construction. So, recorded or not, this ain’t a crannog. The shore party came to the same conclusion and didn’t bother to survey it.
Early summer of 2023 was a time of blissful weather in the Highlands, exceptionally dry and warm occasionally even hot. So, we were really looking forward to our trip to the remote Loch Tachdaidh (west of Loch Monar) on the 3rd of July, which Roland had arranged with the co-operation of the estate owner for boat and argo cat transport. This expedition is the subject of a separate blog by Roland, so all I will say here is that the weather broke before we got there and I was drier swimming in the loch than I was walking up the glen. It did however prove to be a fairly likely crannog although I couldn’t be 100% sure (see the separate blog post on Loch Tachdaidh here).
One of the joys of these blogs is that people of whom you have never heard, contact you and tell you interesting things. That is how Dr Kelly Kilpatrick got in touch to tell me she thought she had found a couple of unrecorded crannogs on Tiree and was I interested in having a look? One thing led to another and before we knew it, a full scale NOSAS expedition to Tiree was arranged, not only to look at crannogs but also to search for a long-lost monastery using resistivity and trial pits. We arrived on Tiree in the first week of September. It had rained just about every day since Loch Tachdaidh but fortune smiled on us and we had a lovely fine week.
We were no sooner off the ferry than Tiree resident Dr John Holliday was leading a group of us down a bumpy track past the local tip, then across boggy, bumpy moorland to Loch Cnoc Ibrig. Due to the difficulty of access we took only snorkelling gear. Our target was a little underwhelming. There was a small patch of vegetation protruding from the water a few yards offshore, but no actual dry land was visible. We swum across to it, but it was immediately obvious that this was just a slight rise in the loch bed, bringing it close enough to the surface for vegetation to take root and grow in the shallow water.
The second target had a bit better pedigree. Loch an Eilein is on record as having a castle on an island, which was demolished for the construction of the present Island House on the same site, though the gap between the island and the shore is now filled in, for access to the house. We hoped there may be evidence of the original island being artificial. There was also a quite crannog-like island across near the far (north) shore and an undoubtedly man-made causeway from the north shore almost to Island House. Although we had a boat available, courtesy of the local sailing club, the water looked so shallow we thought it might ground as we manoeuvred around island House towards the potential crannog, so Andrew, Michael and I decided to swim. Even that proved optimistic and the fastest means of progress was to float on the surface and propel ourselves hand over hand along the bottom, so shallow was the water. We could actually have walked across. Once again, what had looked like a crannog was only bedrock protruding just above the water surface. We returned by wading either side of the causeway which proved to be built of coursed stonework. Later, Alan flew his drone and took some amazing aerial photos. As for Island House, there was too much vegetation in the water to be able to see if it was built on an artificial or a natural island.
Simon, undeterred by the icebreaking at Loch Knockie, joined us with his kayak and he and I paddled around the east side of the loch where we discovered another half-submerged causeway, whilst Michael waded out to some other tiny islands which were again just outcrops of bedrock. On another day, determined to find a crannog somewhere, Simon, Michael and I headed for Loch Bhasapol where there were two recorded crannogs. With Michael wading and swimming and Simon and I on the kayak, we reached two small islands, one of which (the one marked as a crannog on the OS map) looked natural, but the other was probably artificial. There appeared to be a ring of kerbstones around it but the water was so shallow you could hardly call it mound; just the placing of a single stone was sufficient to raise it above the surface. Michael and I each found a stone underwater with man-made depressions carved into them and these were recovered for the local museum. They were later identified as quernstones.
Simon then took me to the second recorded crannog, which was tiny, only a couple of metres across. The water was too shallow to swim and it was too slippery and uneven to wade, (tried; fell over) but with a bit of floundering around I came to the conclusion that it was probably an artificial construction on the grounds that it was a heap of rocks on an otherwise silty loch bed.
Whilst we were on Tiree, there was also crannog activity on the mainland. Fiona and a friend went wild swimming in Loch Lundie near Invergarry and reported that the recorded crannog there certainly looks to have all the right credentials, being a pile of similar sized stones rising up from the loch bed.
With the agreement of the NOSAS committee the Achilty timber samples had been sent off for analysis, identified as oak and submitted to SUERC for radiocarbon dates. We got the results in October and were a little surprised to find they were mediaeval. The lower one about 1060AD and the shallower one three hundred years younger, 1359AD. Mediaeval crannogs are essentially unstudied in the Highlands so this raises interesting possibilities for future work.
So, in conclusion, we have failed to find any unrecorded crannogs so far. We still have a number of targets to check on site in 2024 but experience over the last couple of years does not leave me very optimistic. My admiration for the antiquarians who identified most of the recorded crannogs during the late 19th and early 20th century has grown considerably; these guys were really thorough. Future work? Well, how about these mediaeval crannogs….?
NOSAS Archaeology Blog 
Fascinating! Your research is showing how easy it is to mistake features as crannogs. I’m truly impressed with your perseverance and hardiness. Well done!
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