Dan Snow's History Hit - Tragedy at the Scottish Crannog Centre

Episode Date: June 21, 2021

From the Neolithic period to the early 18th century Crannogs were a feature of Scottish, Welsh and Irish lakes and estuaries enabling a unique way of life. These unusual dwellings consisted of an artificial island constructed over and in the water. The Scottish Crannog Cente on Loch Tay had a wonderful reconstruction of a crannog however just over a week ago it was very sadly destroyed by fire in just a few minutes. Fran Houston, the curator at the Scottish Crannog Centre, is today's guest on the podcast. She explains what happened in the fire but also the history of crannogs, what they were used for, why they were present in our landscapes for so long and their plans to build not just one but three new crannogs!You can out more information about the Scottish Crannog Centre by clicking here and you can make a donation to help with the rebuilding of their crannog via their JustGiving page.

Hi everyone, welcome to Dan's Notes History. We've got an emergency episode that I want to put into the feed today because we learned just over a week ago of a terrible accident that happened to one of the great museums heritage centres in the UK. The Scottish Cranach Centre on the shores of Loch Tay in Scotland is a very special place. Cranachs are a form of stilted dwelling that were common in many of the lochs of this part of Scotland in the Bronze and Iron Ages and continue to be built actually right through to almost the modern period. I was lucky enough 20 years ago, my first jobs in television, I was sent by the BBC to go and dive on the archaeological remains of a crannog in Loch Tay. So I've been here, I've been to the centre, it's a place that's very special to me. And we learned on Friday night that there was a catastrophic fire and their reconstructed crannog, their wooden reconstructed crannog, burnt down completely in

the space of just minutes. The good news is twofold, I suppose. One is that no historic artefacts, no archaeology was destroyed in the fire. It was all reconstructed material. It's a small blessing. And the other is that donations have been pouring in. And I'd ask you, if you listen to this podcast and are moved by what you hear please follow the link in the description of this podcast or head over to my twitter feed and click my post and it will take you to a place where you can contribute as well I know there's lots of worthy causes out there at the moment but it would be great to get the Scottish Chronic Centre back up and running in this podcast at this very busy time I was lucky enough to have the curator get the Scottish Cranach Centre back up and running. In this podcast, in this very busy time, I was lucky enough to have the curator at the Scottish Cranach Centre, Fran Houston,

on the podcast come and talk me through the fire, but also what Cranachs are and what the archaeology is telling us at the moment. It's a very exciting part of archaeology, looking at these sites. As it's reconstructed or when it's finished, it'd be great, we'll get up there, maybe record another podcast and film a little something for HistoryHit.tv, which if you wish to go and subscribe to historyhit.tv, please head over there, join the revolution, become a subscriber, support everything we're doing here at History Hit. You can watch hundreds of hours documentaries. You can listen to all our podcasts, all of our ads. It's a wonderful thing. So please head over there and do that as well. In the meantime, everyone, here is Fran Houston from the Scottish Crannog Centre.

Enjoy. Fran, thank you very much for coming on the pod. Thank you, Dan. Thanks for asking me. Well, I'm sorry it's in these circumstances because I've spent many happy hours at your site. But tell us what happened. Well, what happened was that we did have a fire on Friday night in our Cranog. We obviously have very strict fire regulations, but even so,

despite that, it's just one of these very unfortunate accidents that happened. It only took six minutes to burn. It was incredibly quick. We have the CCTV footage, so we're going through all the processes now with insurance and so forth. And that's why we're all still in shock. We're just numb with it because it was just so instant. Bizarrely, I've been to another Cranog site in East Anglia where it was destroyed,

they think, in a catastrophic fire. You're obviously familiar with it too. And actually, it's very much part of the archaeology and the interest of that site. If it's not appropriate, it's an interesting demonstration of the dangers that were attended on living in a Cranog setting. Absolutely right. Yes, and the irony, if I can call it that, is that when I was examining some of the debris that had washed up on the beach here on our little compound site where the centre's based, I looked at some of the timbers and it was extraordinary just how identical they were to some of the burnt timbers that I have in the collections. The original remains of the two

and a half thousand year old crannog on which our replica was based are on display in our museum. Thankfully, the museum and the collections were intact. They're completely safe. But it was very sort of spooky just to see that similarity in burn damage. And of course, one thing that we will do with the remains of our site is absolutely do an archaeological survey and analysis of this just to see if we can be informed as to what may well have been the situation that faced people back in the Iron Age if and when they did encounter this kind of disaster themselves. Yeah, that's really interesting, Fran. I mean, is this the case that no Iron Age or legacy archaeology material was affected by this fire. It's this entirely modern reconstructed material that was burnt.

Yes, it was. It was built 23 years ago, this crannog that we had here. It took almost three years to complete with lots of volunteer help and support. But yes, absolutely, it was. But even so, we had some beautiful replicas out there. We had our trestle furniture. We had a replica of our butter dish. We've got a fantastic, in the collections, the original butter dish with the butter that was still smeared on the inside of it. That amazingly survived as well. had materials that were stored for basketry making workshops and various other workshops that we run here on site. So you're right, thankfully nothing original did go. But that's not to say that we haven't been left still sort of reeling with lack of other materials and

other sort of ways in which we can interpret Cranog life. Let's talk a bit more about Cranogs. I wish we had you in different circumstances on this podcast. I feel guilty of not having talked to you guys before because it is one of the most remarkable sites I've ever visited in the UK. Tell me more about crannogs. People might not be familiar with that way of settlement. What are they and how widespread were they across, well, the UK world, perhaps Western Europe? Yes. A crannog is basically just a lake dwelling. And we do have lake dwellings or pile dwellings everywhere else in the world, as you've said but we have this Gaelic word crannog crannach to refer to the Irish and the Scottish crannogs and I suppose the slight difference between them and lake dwellings

elsewhere would be that they are sort of individual structures rather than perhaps clusters of them that would make up a water side or a water-based settlement and basically what a crannog is is an. It can be an artificial island that's been purely man-made out of stone, wood, etc. Or it can be a naturally occurring island in a loch that man has somehow modified or sort of interfered with and perhaps put a settlement on, maybe used it as a stockade for animals. It could have been a refuge when times were hard. So whether it's an artificial island or a naturally occurring one, we would still use this word Cranog to refer

to Bronze Age, mainly Cranogs in Ireland and covering a very wide time span, Cranogs here in Scotland as well. But they are lake dwellings. This is obviously a stupid question, but there's obviously lots of reasons that would make people want to go and live above a lake or estuary or a shallow coastal area is it access to marine life fishing is it protection trade because there's this amazing network of chronic sites across they think when the english channel was shallower it's an amazing coastal trading network what is now holland to east anglia what do you think are the drivers that push people to live in this way? Or is it ease? Is it like easier than hacking out clearings in the forest and in hostile territory? Well, it's that too, yes. And in fact, one of the

problems that we have, and one of the fun things that we have when we have visitors here at the centre, is answering their questions as to why people built crannogs and unfortunately because they cover such a wide time period from the Neolithic period right through to the medieval period and because they are all over Scotland depending on where you are geographically and within time you've got different reasons why you might want to build a crannog so for example the Neolithic ones out in the Outer Hebrides, out on the islands, may well have been more for fishing posts or for settlements where people could process meat and fish, etc. Medieval ones in the south of Scotland may well be slightly more reflective of a slightly unstable society

because the kingdoms of Scotland were being formed at this time and they might have been seen as refuges for people just to go and live on while life on land was a little bit unstable. Here in central Scotland, we have some Iron Age ones, which are quite impressive structures and quite possibly are signs of a slightly more higher status way of life. Quite substantial holdings where people farmed to the land, made a good living from the land, as it were, were quite self-sufficient in other technologies such as textile production and so forth. So the ones where we are, for example, the Iron Age ones, may well be reflective of status. And I usually say to people, well, just think about why you live in the house that you live in.

It'll be to do with near schools, near work, handy for the shops. We all have these different reasons. And it's important to realise that this is a multifaceted and very complex life, to do with near schools, near work, handy for the shops. We all have these different reasons and it's important to realise that this is a multifaceted and very complex life covering a very wide time span so the reasons for being out there are also very complex as well. In my case, Fran, it's because I happen to live very close to a D-Day embarkation beach which really caught my eye. Now, Fran, what about your particular site in Lochte that I've been looking to dive on? What is the history of that site? When did it become clear that this was a site of Iron Age crannogs?

It's really due to a lot of research that was done in the 1880s, actually, on the remains of crannogs that could be seen in Lochte. If you look down onto the water, the shallow edges from the top of a hill, or nowadays, of course, we can use a drone, you will quite clearly sometimes see a sort of mound, a dark shadow, which is the remains of a crannog. And so their existence was always known about for quite a long time. And we were certainly aware that in Loch Orr, Loch Lomond, and here on Loch Tay, there were a substantial number of crannogs. And it was in 1979 that the Scottish

Trust for Underwater Archaeology decided to do a survey of the crannogs of Loch Tay, ascertained that we have 17, there's possibly an 18th there as well, but 17 crannogs all in this loch alone and it was for purely practical reasons such as it being close to amenities on land, permission from the landowner to go across into the water from their land to get access to the Cranog, that one particular Cranog was chosen to do an in-depth survey of. And this was Oak Bank Cranog. It's just offshore of the village of Fernan here on Lochte. And a survey was done of it in 1979 and more in-depth one in 1980 and then excavations began in 1981 and continued sporadically throughout the years until about 2005 and even after all that time just intermittent

excavation probably less than half of it was actually fully excavated you know but it was on the basis of all of those discoveries that we were able to build the replica here and of course have the collections in the museum. So that's how that one was particularly sort of discovered and focused on. And speaking of that focus, what was the era, the date that you wanted your replica to replicate? Yes, well, that was 23 years ago when it was decided that there was enough information about Oakbank Cranog that we could attempt to build one based on it. It's not a true replica, to be fair. There are certain features from the original that weren't put in.

It was more an exercise in trying to work out, which alludes to something that you said earlier, just how difficult or easy it might be to build a Cranog and to try and sort of get a sense of the skills and the labour force, the task force that would have been needed, the tools that would have been needed by the people at the time to build a Cranog. And interestingly, it's been suggested, not everybody, the jury is out on this one, not everybody agrees, but it has been suggested that perhaps it isn't particularly that more difficult to build a Cranog on the edges if you have the right conditions than it would be to do the land clearance and

build a thatched roundhouse on dry land. But as I say, not everybody agrees about that. The list of Dan Snow's history hits. We're talking to Fran Houston at the Scottish Cranagh Centre. More after this. What caused the anarchy? How did medieval migrants shape the language I'm speaking right now? Who won the Hundred Years' War? Could England's lost patron saint be buried under a tennis court in Suffolk? How did England's last medieval king end up under a car park? And were the Dark Ages really all that dark?

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into life absolutely it's things relating to daily life in the house we know from the archaeobotanical analysis that the interior of the crannog had been divided into three different areas. We have a sort of area for crop processing, an area for animal husbandry, and a sort of general area where probably sort of quite a lot of mixed activities took place. So the remains and the replicas that we had represented and gave an idea of those things, we have the central hearth. The hearth on the original crannog may have been actually placed closer to the door and to one side of the door, but we had ours in the centre. They definitely did have a hearth and it had to be rebuilt originally. We have this idea of food processing, as you say, the butter dish. We've found beautiful a swan-necked pin, which was one

of the finest examples for Scotland. That had obviously been lost by someone, probably sort of a great deal of chagrin with that, but that was found amongst the remains. And a tiny fragment of textile as well. So we have an idea of their clothing, a beautiful piece of woven woolen textile, which is absolutely amazing and really, really wonderful. We have a bridge from a seven stringed lyre. It's partially broken, but we have this phenomenal little thing that tells us that there was stringed musical instruments on the crannog. A little hunting whistle as well was found. So we have these replicas that have been lost. We do have others of those ones, but we have just got such a wonderfully rich picture of what life was like for these people.

And of course, all the original things are on display. And what about trade and communication? Can you tell much about what kind of societies they were living in or how widely goods and even people might have travelled? boat of some kind. And coming back to this idea of the Iron Age crannogs being potentially quite high status buildings, is that if these people had a slightly sort of thriving lifestyle with their sort of farm, which yielded some good food for them, then one reason for being on the edge of the water and wanting to be close to the water, even living on the water, is because the waterways would have been the trade and communication routes. And it's quite possible, we think, that there may have been a trade route that went from coast to coast through this central part of Scotland, from east to west, following through Loch Lomond, Loch Orr, Loch Tay, through

the smaller rivers and lochans. And from here, of course, we can go all the way down the River Tay to its estuary at Dundee, where quite possibly is where some sort of trading and exchange of ideas and communication took place for people. So we're absolutely certain that they did have a link with the outside world, even though the farm itself was relatively self-sufficient. But we have found things on the site, such as evidence of opium poppy, which quite possibly was imported. It's possible that they were growing that on a very small scale on their farm. How potent that was, we don't know, but it's just a few seeds that were found. But

if you crush the seeds of opium poppy, you get a thick, treacly oil. And a teaspoon of that is going to be a very good anaesthetic if you need it. So quite what they used it for, we don't know. We also have evidence of spelt wheat and emmer wheat being grown on their farm. And again, these are very nice crops to find, slightly higher status, slightly difficult to grow compared to barley, which we also found in abundance. So again, it's just trying to find out just how much of these crops were traded in and how much they grew themselves. We're fairly confident that they did grow the spelt and the emmer and flax on their farm. for example something like the livestock if you've got a relatively smallish herd compared to what we think of herd numbers today then you may well

have wanted to trade some of your livestock and bring in some fresh blood to keep gene pool healthy as it were so yeah we're fairly confident that trading communication etc did take place and you mentioned that people still live on crag today in in Inlay Lake in Myanmar, Burma, of course. But how long do you think the Cranog way of life survived in Scotland or Britain or Ireland? Well, the remarkable thing about Cranogs in Scotland is that plenty were built in the medieval period. And this, again, comes back to this interesting definition of what is a Cranog or when does a Cranog not become a Cranog anymore? Because here on Loch Tay alone, we have one of the Cranogs, which is a medieval one. It's called Priory Island because a priory was built on it in the 12th century for Sibylla, who was King Alexander's wife. And then it's known that in the ruins of that priory, or a little stone cottage that's also on the island,

we're not quite sure which, there seems to be evidence that somebody was living on that in the 1640s. Then we have another crannog here on Loch Tay called Spry Island, which was modified by the Earl of Bredauban in the 1840s because Queen Victoria and Albert were on honeymoon in Scotland and looking for what was going to be their royal seat up here. And the Earl of Bredauban was kind of hoping to flog them, the Bredauburn estate, and so modified Spry Island and paddled them out there for a picnic. And as we all know, they chose Balmoral instead. But that is evidence of mankind sort of interfering and modifying and doing something with the Cranach. So technically, you could say that the last known activity on that one was, well, to be honest with you, last summer when children went swimming out there and paddled on it,

because it's in the shallow bays of Kenmore here, So it's quite easy to swim out to it in the summer. So where do we decide that the history is stopping and we don't call them crannogs anymore? That's true. I mean, I just had a fish and chips yesterday on the south coast on a little jetty built out over the shallow waters of Bembridge Harbour. So maybe that was crannog living. Now, what can I do? What can we all do to help you guys at the moment? Well, thank you, Dan. We are still rallying despite the fact that we're in incredible shock. And obviously, the main thing that we want to do is build another Cranog. People may not be aware that we're actually at a quite a crucial stage in the life of the Cranog Centre anyway, because

we are hoping to move to the other side of the Loch where through community asset transfer we've managed to acquire a larger site, a much bigger site, much better than the one that we're on at the moment. We acquired that from Forestry Land Scotland and so we were just in the sort of stages of wanting to look forward and thinking of ways in which we could develop. So we absolutely do want to try and continue to get over there. We absolutely need to build another Cranog. And in fact, our new site is hoping to build three, a Neolithic one, a medieval one, and of course, another Iron Age one as well. And so we're really sort of at this crucial crossroads in our future. And the sheer amount of inpouring of love and support and

goodwill from everybody all over the world has been absolutely phenomenal. So that proves just how iconic it was to see that Cranog here on Lochte. So, yeah, thank you. We do have plenty of ways in which people can help us. If they go onto our website, which is www.cranog.co.uk, there is a link to a Just Giving page. We do have a Facebook page as well under Scottish Cranog Centre that offer to donate and help us is pinned to the top of that page and also we have an Instagram account Scottish Cranog Centre as well and that's in the bio ways in which people can help us. So we're just really needing to help sort of do a big fundraising campaign here because as museums will have

struggled we've just had to get through the covid year as well or year and a half so this is just an absolute double blow really this losing of the crannog but those are the ways in which people can help us and we're just so grateful for any help that we get well thank you so much fran for coming on i will obviously tweet and do all the insta ring and everything that i can do as well and we'll put a link in the notes to this podcast as well so please everyone i know there's lots of calls on your charity at the moment but i think this is a wonderful cause friend thank you very much for coming on the podcast thank you dan thanks very much on our shoulders. All this tradition of ours, our school history, our songs,

this part of the history of our country, all were gone and finished. Thank you for making it to the end of this episode of Dan Snow's History. I really appreciate listening to this podcast.

I love doing these podcasts. It's a highlight of my career. It's the best thing I've ever done and your support, your listening, is obviously crucial to that project.

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