Traditional Heating in Ireland (Wood & Turf)
Traditionally in Ireland, turf from the bog was burned as a fuel. Once a year, neighbours assisted one another to bring the turf home from the bog. Many rural people still help each other out with this job, except that nowadays the turf is brought home by tractor and trailer and it is usually cut by a huge machine and not by hand. The largest expanses of bog in Ireland are in the midlands. Here, peat was collected and burned on an industrial level for decades. Two peat burning generators still provide respectively 100MW & 150MW of electricity to the State. The bogs in Ireland are essentially made of fossil fuels. They consist of wood and vegetation that grew thousands of years ago, died and rotted in a wet environment without oxygen. Peat could be geologically regarded as being a half way stage between wood and coal. Under different geological circumstances (more time and pressure), peat could have turned into coal.
Peat has trapped much carbon in its formation and by breaking peat up, carbon dioxide is released into the atmosphere. Peat is a carbon sink (it stores carbon dioxide). Given the traditional, healthy, outdoor nature of working on the bog, it is easy to understand how some people are reluctant to believe that working with peat can have negative impacts on the environment. For hundreds of years people dug peat by hand with a “sleán”. This was a slow process, which allowed the bogs wildlife to regenerate and had little impact on the environment. But industrial use of peat has a more significant impact; by releasing carbon from a carbon-sink and through industrial burning. A bog environment similar to Ireland is relatively uncommon in global terms. Evidence of its importance is given from the number of Dutch people that contributed money to preserving Irish bogs. The Dutch bought their first bog in Ireland in Westmeath. It was subsequently given as a gift to the Irish people from Prince Bernhard of the Netherlands. Their conservation interests may have been driven by the fact that bogs disappeared from Holland through over use, several hundred years ago.
If an elderly person from Ireland and an elderly person from the Amazon jungle were separately recorded discussing the environment. They might have similar doubts on how such locally vast areas of bog or forest could be significant in global environmental terms.
Yet, without taking this global view on peat in Ireland, we have historical examples of its environmental significance in the records. The Ireland of today is very different to the Ireland of 400 years ago.
When the first people came to Ireland, about 9000 years ago, it was a heavily wooded landscape of hazel scrub, overshadowed by oak, ash, elm and pine.
From the archaeological record, it appears that the first settlers of this period, lived in timber huts (from excavations of Mount Sandel near the Bann Estuary). Later, farming spread through Europe and reached Ireland around 4000 BC.
Around 2000BC to 1000BC, the climate got worse and people began hoarding more valuables, maybe afraid of famine or of some other calamity. This made it easier for modern archaeologists to date the historical record. Farming during this period is thought to be partially responsible for the spread of upland bogs. There was also political turbulence during this period as spearheads and swords entered the archaeological record. Hilltops also started to become better defended.
People wishing to farm had to clear areas from the wooded landscape; where they lived, kept their animals and sometimes grew crops. These areas were called ringforts and are visible on the landscape as large circular mounds.
People who grew up in rural areas, when I did would have held a respect for these monuments as they were told by other children or elderly people (that may have been joking or, if not, would have been considered odd by wider society) that these were “fairy” forts and should not be damaged or even entered, in case the fairies were angered.
More sophisticated people can laugh at the innocence of this but I believe it reflects the way mythology can preserve and protect an environment. The logic of doing so makes more sense to me than the way some more “respectable” beliefs treat their surroundings. Ireland has a huge abundance of archaeology. In terms of ringforts alone, 18,000 have been positively identified in the field and a further 28,000 have been identified on paper (e.g. aerial photographs and maps). These 50,000 or so forts would originally have been largely wooden structures built using wooden posts and wattle fences.
Some forts held greater meaning and were more powerful than others. The five historical provincial regions of Ireland, probably all had their own significant ringforts in their capital settlements. Cuige or the irish language for “province” comes from the Irish for five – “cuig”. Settlements of significance in each of these provinces were probably located at Tara, Emain Macha, Rathcroghan, Cashel and the Hill of Allen.
Archaeologists have informed us that in 94BC, the people of Emain Macha in County Armagh erected an enormous wooden building with four rings of regularly placed upright posts. This was used for ceremonial gatherings by the surrounding communities. The remains of a Barbary ape were found in this structure. It was worth noting, that the only European home of the Barbary Ape is in Gibraltar (thought to have come from north Africa) which is further from Emain Macha than the Arctic Circle. This gives a whole other meaning to the term “Arctic Monkeys” or maybe it shows that Ireland had ancient links with North Africa, in a time when it was easier to travel long distances over sea than over land. This proposed link is not so far fetched when comparisons of Irish records and the archaeological and historical records of places, further to the south, like Carnac in Brittany and Galicia in Spain are considered. North Africa itself has stone circles that have not received much academic study. On the other coast at the Great Ruins in Zimbabwe, Chinese pottery shards, coins from Arabia, glass beads and other non-local items that have been excavated suggest that the city formed part of a trade network extending as far as China.
Again, we do not have to take the global view on such things to learn about ecology and the environment. In many places, what was once a covering of peat has been removed as far down as the underlying bedrock – providing a classic example of a fuel source that is not renewable. The Burren region in County Clare holds a lot of water under its limestone surface and its sheltered limestone crevices mean that grass grows better there in winter. It was traditionally used by large farmers from other parts of the country as a place to graze their cattle in the winter. Even in modern times, it is valued for its winter grazing. Historically, this meant that the land in the Burren was valued. This in turn, meant that many kingdoms and settlements were established there.
One of the biggest problems with many of these settlements was access to fuel. There are and were not many bogs close to the larger settlements in the Burren such as Cathair Chómain (“Cómain’s city / settlement”). This meant that peat had to be brought into the region. Some commentators believe that a combination of intense farming and the lack of a fuel-source is likely to have assisted in producing the rocky landscape that can be seen today. Nowadays the Burren is protected for its beauty and the flowers that grow sheltered in the limestone but the beauty of the bare rock landscape may also record one of Ireland’s first major, man-made ecological footprints.
Because of its turbulent history, nowadays there are very, very few parts of Ireland that have not been impacted by agriculture. In the past woods were left alone and would have provided habitats that allowed prized hunting animals to breed and survive. Irish and British maps are full of places named after boars, eagles and hawks in Gaelic, English and other languages. Achill island in County Mayo comes from the Latin for “eagle” or Nadd in County Cork from “Nead an Iolar” or the “Eagle’s Nest”. Anywhere with a “turk” in its name came from “tuirc” which is the Gaelic for boar. “Tuirc” can also be found in placenames in Scotland (e.g. Brig O’ Turk or Beinn an Tuirc). In Wales, “twrch” is the equivalent which is Welsh for “boar” is found in “Twrch Fechen” or “Blaen Twrch”. Isknamacteera in Co. Kerry means "the field of the wolf".
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