‘Living Bog' project to hold Heritage Week event in Streete

A window into Westmeath's relationship with its bogs has recently been re-opened by the team behind a bog restoration project in the county.

They are to throw open the doors during Heritage Week with an event in Streete on Wednesday, August 23, which will explore all aspects of Westmeath's rich and varied bog history.

‘The Living Bog', a national raised bog restoration project working on 12 sites in seven counties nationwide, is restoring Garriskil Bog SAC, close to Streete, Rathowen and Ballinalack.

The bog is one of Ireland's biggest remaining raised bogs, and is one of the last surviving raised bogs along the River Inny. It is located along the Sligo Mullingar rail line and was one of the first bogs in the country to be protected by the Irish Government, back in the 1990s.

‘The Living Bog' team is hosting a ‘Life on Westmeath's Bogs' event, as part of Heritage Week 2017 at Streete Parish Park Community Centre, from 7pm.

The event will feature as special guest, broadcaster and author Manchán Magan, who will give a colourful presentation on the cultural and social significance of raised bogs.

Ronan Casey from ‘The Living Bog' project team, and Tríona Finnen from the National Parks and Wildlife Service will also give informative talks.

Garriskil was one of Ireland's most significant raised bogs. It was the only bog in the country to have a national rail station, the long-since disappeared Inny Junction, and it was also crossed by St Patrick and worked on by descendants of singer Bruce Springsteen. Famously, the Inny Junction train station was the only one in Ireland, or Britain, to not have road access.

Admission to the Heritage Week event is free, and it is the first of a number of Westmeath events ‘The Living Bog' team will undertake in the county as they get their restoration project, which is the biggest ever in Ireland, off the ground.

The project team has been asking locals all over the country to raid the archives, to help build a greater picture not just of the local bog, but of all stages of the relationship people have with their local bogs.

A similar drive in Cavan has yielded exceptional results, and locals have come up with all manner of memories – from videos and photos of people on the bog, to wildlife photos, old tools, bog arts and crafts and even small articles.

These have been uploaded to ‘The Living Bog' website (raisedbogs.ie) and to YouTube (look for ‘The Living Bog') for widespread viewing, and ‘the Living Bog' team are hopeful that bog memories from the Lake County can be recorded before it's too late.

Ronan Casey of ‘The Living Bog' explained that a former Cavan garda started jotting down some of his memories of his summers on the bog in the 1950s and 1960s, and ended up writing an article which has been rated by experts in the field as being one of the most authoritative accounts of Cavan bog life.

“It recalled the families of the area, the craic, hard work and community comradery had during a traditional day on the bog – and also the wildlife; birds like the Curlew and other animals, many of which have long since disappeared,” said Ronan.

“These memories may seem harmless to most people, but there is very little recorded about the bog in Ireland's archives. Any memory of the work, or the tools, or the wildlife is important.”

‘The Living Bog' is hoping that people in Westmeath can come up with something similar, and Ronan urged people to contact them through the @LIFEraisedbogs social media channels or via raisedbogs.ie.

Raised Bogs once covered almost 320,000 hectares of Irish land, but today it is estimated that just 1% of this figure is active, living raised bog. Garriskil Bog is one of 53 raised bogs that were designated by then government Minister Michael D Higgins in the 1990s as Special Areas of Conservation/Natura 2000 sites.

Thanks to the European Union's LIFE Programme wide scale restoration is taking place on 12 of these.

For more: see raisedbogs.ie and also search for ‘The Living Bog' on YouTube or @LIFEraisedbogs on Facebook and Twitter.