Derryvree’s Mossy Shallows
The single most useful Irish environmental record for this nominal date lies at Derryvree, near Maguiresbridge in County Fermanagh. Roadworks in 1969 cut through a drumlin and revealed freshwater silts, fine sands and organic layers trapped between two thick tills: unsorted debris deposited by glacier ice. The lower till shows that ice had previously occupied the locality. The organic sediments record an intervening period when standing or slowly moving fresh water and wet ground existed there. The upper till demonstrates that ice later returned or expanded over the site. This is a sequence of major environmental change, not a frozen image of one season.