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Loughnashade, Tullyargle is a votive site of Iron Age date situated in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. The site centres on a ritual lake where objects were deliberately deposited as offerings, a practice deeply embedded in Iron Age religious belief across Britain and Ireland. Such votive deposition in water bodies represented a significant form of ritual activity, with lakes and wetlands serving as liminal spaces believed to connect the terrestrial and supernatural worlds. The specific landscape at Loughnashade, underlain by the Armagh Group bedrock of Visean limestone, argillaceous rocks and subordinate sandstone, would have held particular significance for those who made these ritual offerings.
The site is protected as a monument of archaeological importance by the Historic Environment Division under reference 5394, recognising its role in understanding Iron Age religious practices and settlement patterns in Ulster. Votive sites of this type are rare and irreplaceable sources of evidence for Iron Age material culture and belief systems, as the waterlogged conditions often preserve organic materials and metalwork that would otherwise be lost. The deposits recovered from such sites provide crucial insights into the values, craftsmanship and spiritual worldview of Iron Age communities.
Loughnashade, tullyargle. votive site - ritual lake is a scheduled monument protected by Department for Communities NI under reference 5394. View the official record →
Loughnashade, Tullyargle is a votive site of Iron Age date situated in County Armagh, Northern Ireland. It is designated a Scheduled Ancient Monument by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) under reference 5394.
Loughnashade, tullyargle. votive site - ritual lake dates from the iron age period, and is classified as a votive site. It is one of over 32,000 scheduled monuments protected across the UK.
Loughnashade, tullyargle. votive site - ritual lake is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, legally protected by DfC Northern Ireland (NISMR) — the body responsible for designating and safeguarding heritage sites in Ni. The official designation reference is 5394.
Several scheduled monuments lie within 10 km, including Rath reused as tree ring (5.2 km), Rath (5.6 km), The danes cast, the danes cast (north). linear earthwork (6.8 km).
This page is just one thread. A full Aubrey report pulls together 14 strands of Loughnashade, tullyargle. votive site - ritual lake's history, each drawn from the record and mapped to the exact spot:
Every location is different. Not every section appears for every place, only what the historical record actually holds turns up in a report.
Loughnashade, tullyargle. votive site - ritual lake stands on Armagh Group, bedrock that formed in the Visean. The rock here is limestone, argillaceous rocks and subordinate sandstone, interbedded.