Ardee Bog, October 2020.
Friends of Ardee Bog is a community-led environmental group founded in 2019 to protect and preserve Ardee Bog — Ireland’s most easterly raised bog.
Ardee Bog is 10,000 years old, older and wiser than all of us. But she can’t speak up to protect herself. We are dedicated to being her voice.
Ardee Bog, October 2020. In the foreground is a bog pool full of luscious Sphagnum moss, the bog builder.
You could say Bogs are Ireland’s rainforest!
Irish peatlands represent the largest store of carbon in the Irish landscape. They hold 75% of the soil’s organic carbon — that’s more carbon than is stored by forestry and agriculture, combined! This means that our bogs play a vital role in mitigating the effects of climate change. We are in a Climate Crisis. Peatlands can help us — they sequester and store atmospheric carbon for thousands of years. We must do all that we can to protect our bogs, including Ardee Bog.
The world reflected in a frozen bog pool, Ardee Bog, 2022.
50% of Europe’s raised bogs are in Ireland
In Ireland, raised bogs—including Ardee Bog—started to form around 10,000 years ago.
As the Ice Age glaciers were melting, the ice scratched the landscape and moved the land creating the depressions which would form into lakes (Ireland is like a flat mountain with a sunken centre).
These lakes filled with glacial melt water and were lined with a chalk marl formed from invertebrates and shells which helped create waterlogged, low oxygen conditions.
Any plants which grew and died fell into the lake and did not decompose as there were no worms, bacteria, fungi. These plant materials built up, trapped under a high water table.
As the lake fills with plant material (peat) it’s called a fen, which is a transitional habitat; in-between a lake and raised bog.
Fens will turn into a raised bog if the right brown sphagnum mosses move in.
Ardee Bog from the air, 2020.
Famed botanist Robert Lloyd Praeger visited Ardee Bog in 1897.
There’s a rumor that David Bellamy visited Ardee Bog in the 1980’s. If you know anything about his trip and whether he actually did visit Ardee Bog — please let us know!
Since 1981 Ardee Bog has been listed as having scientific importance.
The Irish Peatland Conservation Council undertook surveys of Ardee Bog in 1990 and 1998 and identified a core area for conservation surrounded by a bufferzone of supporting habitat. The site represents an asset of considerable importance for County Louth’s Natural Heritage and every effort needs to be taken to ensure its protection. In addition, the Great Bog of Ardee features in a landscape study undertaken by the late Professor Frank Mitchell in 1995 and published in the Atlas of the Rural Irish Landscape.
This map of Ardee Bog from The Great Bog of Ardee by Frank Mitchell and Breeda Tuite (1995), shows how Ardee Bog is a Complex of multiple bogs. The Ardee Bog Complex comprises Corstown Bog, Stormanstown Bog and Ardee Bog. They are mostly in County Louth, but Corstown Bog seeps across the border into County Meath.
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All photos and videos on this website were taken in Ardee Bog by members of Friends of Ardee Bog — Bryony Archer, Adrian Crawley, Fiona Crawley, Katie Holten, Shelly Holten, Anne Lennon and Seán Walsh (unless stated otherwise).