The Gathering for the Crannog Centre.

A public art installation on the banks of Loch Tay at the new Scottish Crannog Centre Museum opening in April 2024.

The Crannog Museum is a place to discover what life was like during Iron Age Scotland (800 BC to AD 400). The word crannog refers to both man-made circular islets and the thatched round houses found on them. Remnants of 18 crannogs have been identified in Loch Tay and a crannog on the south side of the loch, dating from 500 BC, was researched extensively by underwater archaeologists Dr Nick Dixon and Barrie Andrian. Based on their findings they built the Oakbank Crannog (with volunteers) between 1994-1997 and this became the Crannog Centre open air museum. The underwater archaeology was documented by The Time Team in 2004 in an interesting film called ‘The House on the Loch’. This can be viewed on You Tube here.

The crannogs were large round dwellings suitable for a large family. and their animals. This may have felt a safer place for a home than the densely wooded hillsides with lynx, wolf and brown bears. It may also have been easier to build in the loch than on the hillside, or were the crannogs originally built loch-side and became islets later, when the height of the loch rose? 500 BC was a time of storms and increasing sea levels . Remnants of ancient trees have been found underwater on the loch bed, thought to be trees fringing the lochside 3,000 years ago.

The crannog dwellers were well connected to others living around the loch by boat, and remnants of dugout log canoes and paddles have been found. These Iron Age people were using oak, alder, hazel and birch for woodwork with rudimentary mortice and tenon joints, lathe-turned wooden bowls, and carved utensils. Even a butter dish with butter have been found. The cold, peaty water has preserved wood to an unusual extent. In the fascinating book The Wood Age, Roland Ennis describes how wood has been fundamental to all technological development over millennia, but as wood is bio-degradable usually only stone and metals items are discovered, hence the Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age.

It is still easy to feel connected to people living and working around the loch 2,500 years ago, when we use local trees for woodwork, row or paddle on the loch, and gather round a fireside in winter,

The Oakbank Crannog burnt down in 2021 and this accelerated plans already in place to move the museum across the loch to a forestry commission site called Dalerb, by Kenmore. This lochside land had a carpark and picnic site and has long been a popular spot for locals to access the loch. Our film Acorns to Art, made in 2015, begins at Dalerb with a view towards the upright wooden remnants of an old pier dating from Loch Tay’s Victorian heyday, when tourist steamers cruised up and down the loch. You can view our film Acorns to Art on our about page.

Lorna swims from the little beach at Dalerb most weeks of the year, and in summer past the pier to a just submerged crannog, half a mile west of the beach about 30 yards off-shore. This crannog looks like a pile of large round boulders, and when the height of the water in the loch water is just a few inches above the boulders it is fun to watch swimmers stand up and ‘walk on water’.

The image above shows our 3D printed model of Angus’s design for The Gathering which has been commissioned by the Crannog Centre to help fund the huge amount of Iron Age type construction currently under-way. Several round houses are being built to demonstrate Iron Age fire making, woodwork and cooking. The building process can be watched on the same Grand Tours of Scotland’s Rivers episode that featured our workshop and woodland, and links can be found in the previous journal post.

The design of The Gathering blends a few thoughts: a grove of trees, the upright timber supports found in crannogs, a gathering of people with arms linked at shoulder height. The interlinking elements represents the Crannog Centre’s ethos of working together and promoting inter-connectedness across time and place.

In this public art work there is a rare opportunity to become involved. By donating £250, you are invited to honour a special person, or celebrate a significant moment and support the project For each donation a customised transparent disc will be included in The Gathering.

The discs will be placed between the two vertical columns at the centre of each post element.

If you wish to donate and have a customised disc included in The Gathering please do the following…

Choose your illustration to go in the centre of the disc. Choose one of an oak leaf, a wolf, an ash leaf, a boar or a triskele (three interconnected spirals). The celtic triskele design is interpreted in many ways: water - earth - air / maiden - mother - crone/ father - son - holy spirit/ birth - life - death.

Choose your text. Up to 40 characters that will be engraved around the illustration. Note a character is a letter, a punctuation mark or space.

Send BACS payment to the Crannog Centre Account name: The Scottish Crannog Centre Trust Sort code: 80-02-24 Account number: 00839815

Then email the Crannog Centre shop@crannog.co.uk and include your name, your choice of image, your text , and the name and date on your BACS payment.

If you have questions or need any help with this please email us or the Scottish Crannog Centre Museum at shop@crannog.co.uk.

The name Dalerb may sound familiar because we used the name for a collection of garden collection presented at RHS Chelsea in 2023, and available in Made to Order section of the website.

See the location of the new Scottish Crannog Centre at the beginning of our film Acorns to Art (2005) using the button below.

See Iron Age round houses being built for the Crannog outdoor museum in this episode of Grand Tours of Scotland (the button below is a link). Presenter Paul Murton then visits our workshop and woodland and turns his hand to steam-bending.

We will add to this journal post as the project develops. This is a not-for-profit project.