The oldest field system in the World

In the 1930s, a local schoolmaster, Patrick Caulfield from Belderrig, noticed piles of symmetrical stones when he was cutting turf in the 1930s. It dawned on him that since the walls must predate the bog, they had to be truly ancient. He wrote to inform the National Museum in Dublin, but during the war years, they couldn’t spare the petrol to drive west to investigate. 40 years later Patrick’s son, Seamus, graduated as an archaeologist and used iron probes to follow tracks of the walls over many acres deep beneath the earth. Carbon dating proved the site to be dated to 3000 BC making it the oldest field system in the world. There is now an award-winning visitor center that helps explain the story of the everyday lives of the farming people, their organized society, their highly developed spiritual beliefs, and their struggle against a changing environment beyond their control.