Helen Shaw – curator Tóchar Stories

I’ve been visiting Carbury in Co Kildare and meeting with the community group who own and manage Knockirr Bog for over a year now. It’s an unusual story. A bogland of nearly 500 acres held in community ownership under a trust created by a local landowner in 1906. Much of the bog remains undisturbed but a portion has been cut over and cutting turf for domestic use remains a valued part of the life of many in the area.

Ciaran Duggan is Chairman of the Carbury Bogs Trust and farms his land not far from it. His late father was a trustee before him. Ciaran grew up with the bog and his father’s stories of it. When his father died in his mid-fifties Ciaran found himself taking over the role as a trustee and becoming immersed in the landscape, its history, ecology and culture. Like many, his relationship with the bog has shifted with time and experience and in recent years the trust’s committee has accommodated space for a dialogue about the future, reflecting and respecting both the community’s continued tradition of turf cutting and a shared commitment to environment stewardship.

Ciaran says: “We like to say we steward the bog for conservation, and we also do provide some opportunity for locals to cut some turf. So over the last approximately 300 years, of the near 500 acres that’s in community ownership, approximately 80 has been cut over. So that leaves about 420 that hasn’t been cut over at all. At the moment, of that 80 maybe twenty percent of it is being actively cut. Nobody has a right to cut turf here. This is community-owned, and the fact that there aren’t any turbary rights here is unusual. There are somewhere between 100 to 120 families who save turf here every year. We are committed to continuing turf cutting for as long as that makes sense. But at the same time, there’s lots of work we can do to assist in the conservation of the rest of the bog. It would be fair to say that part of those discussions does include a realisation that there is probably change coming in the next number of years, or decades.”

Watch:  Ciaran’s interview on Knockirr Bog and his hopes for the future (January 2026)

For Ciaran the bog is the constant presence while human activity changes over time. For him there’s a need for people to reconnect with nature and for places like Carbury that can start with the local landscape of the bog – with all its history, meaning and multiplicity of values from energy to the environment. It’s that relationship, he believes, that will support communities taking ownership of nature conservation and seeing their own futures in the protection of the bogland. 

“We’ve become very disconnected from the land in general. I think the particular situation that pertains in this bog gives the community an opportunity to connect back with nature, with the land itself. And it’s really in the hearts and minds of the people surrounding the bog that I would like to see that change. If we can connect better with our environment, the bog being our jewel here in this area, that’s what will protect it. So my answer is in hearts and minds rather than necessarily what’s actually happening on the bog…Our bog is the obvious place for us to do it here”.

You can find out more about the Knockirr & Carbury Bog Group on its facebook page.

Read a connected story about Tóchar Stories work in Carbury : Weaving Stories in Carbury 

Listen to an RTÉ Radio 1 Countrywide feature, July 2025, about the Carbury & Knockirr Bog Group