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Title 3 Title 4 Title 5 SECTION 4 |
Ross Island Mine, looking across Lough Leane to Shehy Mountain. 'There is a lake called Lough Lein. Four circles are around it. In the first circle, it is surrounded by tin, in the second by lead, in the third by iron and in the fourth by copper...'
The above lines were written around 800 AD by a Welsh monk, Nennius, who included the mineral wealth of Killarney as a wonder of the known world. Remarkably, our investigation at Ross Island has uncovered evidence of metal production in this early Christian period, in the form of small furnaces dated to around AD 700. This period saw extensive enclosed settlement ('ringforts') around Killarney and the establishment of an important monastic centre on the island of Innisfallen, Lough Leane. A large metalworking complex using metal ores from Ross Island has also been identified at Scrahane in Killarney. These archaeological discoveries suggest that Killarney was a major source of copper and possibly other metals in the early Christian era.
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