Earth moves in Dromore

HEAVY rain and flooding in parts of North Clare earlier this year have caused the earth to move in Dromore Wood. A local man, out for a walk in the area noticed a large piece of marsh, approximately 18 metres by 11 metres, had washed up on the shore of Black Lake, which forms part of Dromore Lake.
Michael Moloney from Ruan was walking in the Dromore Wood nature reserve when he made the discovery.
“With the floods and high winds in January, this piece must have broke off. I don’t know where it broke off from but it must have come up from the end of the Black Lake, which leads to Dromore Lake and the River Fergus because it didn’t appear to have come away from anywhere nearby.

“In the high floods it could have come up from Barefield direction but the only way you would find out is by hopping into a boat and sailing around the perimeter of the lake because wherever it came from, it must have left a gap. I would say the piece of land is 20 yards by 12 to 14 yards wide and it is about 14 inches to about 2.5ft in depth, so it is quite a sizeable amount of ground,” he explains.

Mr Moloney also noted that the water must have been very high when the piece of marsh washed up because “to get here it had to come in over the reeds. If the water was lower, it would have flattened the reeds so we know that the water level had to be above them at the time.

“I have never seen anything like it so I informed the caretakers about it. That was a large amount of ground to move so there must have been a strong current at the time,” he adds.

Mr Moloney does not believe the piece of ground is likely to take off again. “It lodged there now in the trees and scrub. It won’t move again because it will take root there,” he says.