By Helen Shaw, Tóchar Stories
There is something about wandering down a field in a flourishing bog and suddenly happening upon the yellow and blue of the Bog Bothy looking as if it has just landed, like a joyful Tardis from another planet.
“It’s a little bit magical”, local artist Emer Gaffey says when we turn up on a balmy July evening for an event at Cornafulla Bog, where the Bog Bothy is being hosted by the local community, Cornafulla Micro Reserve until August 9th.
That evening wildlife expert Owen Murphy, from Breeding Waders EIP, is presenting on birds of the Shannon Callows and Cornafulla Bog. Local community volunteers Vincent Harney and his son Oliver Harney are setting up the Bothy while their colleague artist Amanda Ralph is sharing details with us about her own exhibition, Field Station, inspired by Cornafulla Bog, on show in the Luan Gallery in Athlone until the end of August.
Amanda is a Westmeath native but she bought a place just facing the bog in 2022 and fell in love with the biodiversity of it and how it connected with her research and artistic practice. “And then I met with a kind of like-minded group of people who were also interested in studying the biodiversity in the area, and we formed into a kind of a group, and we got involved in looking at the whooper swans on the bog and we then formalised into a group called Cornafulla Micro Reserve. Now, the micro reserve is a bit of a joke because I had 0.8 of an acre in the bog…But since that, more and more people have got involved, and we have 47 acres involved in it now of local landowners who are interested in the kind of protection preservation and possibly the restoration of Cornafulla Bog” she says.
Amanda connected with locals including Vincent Harney, a retired postmaster in Cornafulla, and his family; Vincent’s son Oliver and Oliver’s wife Emma have also become active volunteers. While Amanda’s a newcomer, Vincent knows every door and family in the locality. His family farm is close to the bog and he spent his childhood helping to bring home the turf. “My family has land here going back hundreds of years and part of the land, even in the landlord’s time, was the bog” he says. “So part of this bog was our land, where our family cut sleán turf back in the day. And when I went to national school I would be told to run home from school at 3 o’clock because I had to go into the bog with tea for my older brother and my father. So the tea, there’d be no flasks at the time, the tea had been in a Lucozade bottle. And so I’d run across the fields into the bog and bring in the tea and the currant cake and whatever they were eating. But we always enjoyed the bog because we lived so near the bog. So we never got this feeling that often people say, “Oh, I hate the bog.” We always loved the bog and we listened to the birds, you know, as young people”.
Vincent, who runs guided walking tours in Athlone, is a committed advocate for nature restoration and for preserving what’s left of Ireland’s living bogs. “I still farm that little farm. I still have the bog. And most of it I’ve put into the Breeding Waders programme. And so I’m delighted to be part of that programme and to see a better future now for the bogs as well.”
The Breeding Waders programme has been instrumental in bringing local farmers into bog preservation. Cornafulla is a significant landscape for whooper swans who over-wintering on the bog and protecting that habitat for those birds, and ground nesting birds is a shared passion for Amanda and Vincent.
For Owen Murphy, senior project manager with Breeding Waders EIP, it is about making wildlife and nature protection part of the land value for farmers. He is himself local to the area and well known and trusted by local landowners. “So what we’re doing is we’re paying landowners to implement management plans. So we’re sitting down with a landowner, we’re saying, how can you manage this? This is what we need done, or this is what the birds like. How does that fit in with your farming regime?.. And then you’re paying them for delivering. So not only are they farming, and they’re farming beef or they’re farming sheep, they’re also farming curlew or they’re farming lapwing. You know, they’re producing these things, and farmers are very good at producing” he says.
Vincent’s son Oliver grew up in Cornafulla but moved away to work and returned some six years ago with his wife Emma and their young family. He feels he is rediscovering the natural beauty of the place anew. “ Actually my back garden extends out onto one of the most preserved parts of the bog where we still have active raised bog growing. So it’s just really incredible there, seeing all the sphagnum mosses and bogbeans and watching all the birds coming and going as well, so yeah, it’s a lovely place to be able to live”.
Oliver says the local farmers all get it. “These farmers do have a great respect for nature. They’re all from here going back many generations. They love where they’re from, they respect the farms, they respect the Shannon Callows. So those people were already on board in lots of ways with different programmes. There’s a huge, I suppose, regret here as well that, you know, we’ve lost the corncrake. Cornafulla was one of the last bastions in the country for the corncrake. It’s still on the crest of our GAA club and it’s gone now the last 12 years, but we hope to get it back. So there is, I suppose, that sense locally that people know what we have and what we’ve lost and what we could get back – hopefully”.
Would you like to see the Bog Bothy at Cornafulla?
You can find the full schedule for remaining events for Cornafulla Bog Bothy on their website Cornafulla Bog Bothy Schedule and artist Emer Gaffey is now hosting a plein air art and bog workshop on Tuesday, August 4th 10am-5pm and she’s part of the Threads of Place open air exhibition in Athone over the Bank Holiday weekend.
If you have been following Tóchar Stories you have also got to know Eugene Dunbar from Tyrrellspass, Co Westmeath and Eugene is hosting a Moths of the Bog session at 11am on Monday August 3rd, the Bank Holiday.
For more connected stories:
READ: Ella McSweeney (Irish Times April 11 2026) “Cornafulla Bog is a gold mine,let’s not squander it”
Photo : Cornafulla Micro Reserve volunteers with Owen Murphy (Breeding Waders) and Helen Shaw (Tóchar Stories, end right)
To find out more about the story behind the Bog Bothy created by the Irish Architecture Foundation (IAF) and architects 12th Field as a touring, wooden shelter designed to support communities reimagine their changing relationship with the peatlands check out IAF Fieldwork – Bog Bothy.
- The 2025 Bog Bothy Tour, across three Midlands communities is supported by Tóchar Wetlands Restoration. You can read our story about Tina Claffey’s bog macro photography workshop at Bog Bothy Milltownpass and watch our video with the Milltownpass Tidy Towns at the end of the Bog Bothy visit.
- Follow Tóchar Stories on Instagram @tocharstories and listen to the audio stories on “Where the Curlew Calls” on Spotify, Soundcloud and the video playlist on Vimeo.