Maguirebridge’s Intertill Pools
Archived: 28 September 2026
Around 30,549 BCE, Ireland has no documented human or political history, but Derryvree near Maguiresbridge, County Fermanagh, preserves a rare Middle Midlandian environmental record. Organic freshwater silts between glacial tills, radiocarbon dated broadly to this period, show a locally ice-free cold wetland amid fluctuating glaciation. Sedges, grasses, mosses, herbs, aquatic plants and Arctic-alpine species occupied treeless, waterlogged ground with harsh winters and short summers. Later ice sealed the deposits. Cave remains indicate that cold-adapted mammals, including mammoth, reindeer and hyaena, occurred in Ireland during the wider period, but cannot prove human settlement, activity or reliable routes to the island there.