Home > Uniquely Unspoilt Magazine > Issue 15 > Food festival

~~ Wild Harvest Food Event - by Barrie Andrian ~~

The Scottish Crannog Centre by Kenmore, Loch Tay, Perthshire is hosting the third annual Wild Harvest Food Event on Sunday, 21st November 2004 from 11am to 3pm.  The ancient loch-dwellers would have celebrated their autumnal harvests in style and the modern-day Crannog Crew are working up an appetite as they prepare for this 'Taste the Past' event.

In addition to the standard exhibits of guided crannog tours and ancient technology demonstrations, the Crew will be offering visitors a chance to sample Iron Age-inspired cuisine, from authentic soup to nuts.

Food remains from underwater excavations at the 2,600 year old 'Oakbank Crannog' in Loch Tay indicate that Tayside's loch-dwellers had a nutritious and varied diet and they knew how to exploit nature's bounty. Well preserved nuts and berries, grains, animal remains and more than 200 edible plants discovered so far, provided Crannog cooks with plenty of food for thought.

As a tribute to their culinary talents, Sunday's wild harvest event will feature samples of a selection of themed nutty breads and spreads, soup, dairy products, crannog cakes and range of beverages.  Free recipes will be on offer, together with unusual and innovative gift ideas.  The food fayre marks the last event of the season for the Crannog Centre which is open during weekends until the end of November.  The Centre will then re-open on 15th March 2005.

Crannogs are a type of ancient loch-dwellings found throughout Scotland and Ireland and most are circular structures that seem to have been built as individual homes to accommodate extended families.  Crannogs are also known as artificial or modified natural islands and they were as much a product of their environment as the period in which they were constructed.

The authentic crannog reconstruction, which forms the focal part of the Scottish Crannog Centre, was built by the Scottish Trust for Underwater Archaeology, a charity formed to promote the research, recording and preservation of Scotland's underwater heritage.

The crannog's ancient structural timbers, plant remains, food, utensils and even clothing, have been remarkably well preserved by the cold, peaty water.  Particularly spectacular are a butter dish with butter still sticking to the inside of it and a handful of sloes with the fruit still intact.  Pollen, seeds and herbs have also been discovered.

The Crannog Centre reconstruction is based on their excavation results from the 2,500 year old Oakbank  Crannog located off the village of Fearnan.

The earliest loch-dwelling in Scotland is some 5,000 years old but people built, modified and re-used crannogs in Scotland up until the 17th century AD. Throughout their long history crannogs served as farmers' homesteads, status symbols, refuges in times of trouble, hunting and fishing stations as well as holiday residences. Here in Highland Perthshire the prehistoric crannogs were originally timber-built roundhouses supported on piles or stilts driven into the loch-bed.

In more barren environments and in later periods, tons of rock were piled onto the loch-bed to make an island on which to build a stone house. Today the crannogs appear as tree-covered islands or remain hidden as submerged stony mounds.  Several hundred have been discovered so far in Scotland although only a few have been investigated.

Barrie Andrian
Scottish Crannog Centre

The following holiday cottages are situated within easy reach of the locations mentioned above: