Former smuggling route a Brexit area of dispute
A former smuggling route on both sides of the Irish border has been a “meeting place” for centuries, a cultural heritage expert has said.
Brexit negotiators are duelling over the future of areas such as Tyrone and Fermanagh in the North and Donegal in the Republic which meet in a remote western peat bogland. It has no roads.
The area featured in Italian poet Dante’s Inferno, about the circles of hell, and, in more recent years — during the 30-year Troubles — was preserved untouched by human hand because it was not safe, said heritage scholar Liam Campbell. Its archaeological secrets were built up over 4,500 years in the marshy turf, with only stone circles remaining, and conifer trees planted on a bare landscape denuded of people.
Dr Campbell added: “It was regarded by the British as somewhere the native Irish went to. They were demonised. It was where civilisation ended.
He said it was known by the settlers as the end of the world.
This part of Ireland was famous throughout Europe in the Middle Ages and influenced Dante’s Inferno, after the famous writer read a description of it.
Following the plantation of Ulster, in the 17th century, it was known as bandit country, regarded as “dreary” by some English planters in Derry.
It is the meeting place of three counties, three religious dioceses, three Irish clans, the O’Neills, O’Donnells and Maguires, and a water catchment for the River Foyle.
Dr Campbell said: “This is a real meeting place. The whole idea of a meeting place was to provide sanctuary.
