Rahasane Turlough
West of Craughwell there is a lake in winter and a meadow in summer. Rahasane is a turlough, a lake of the limestone with no outlet on the surface, rising and falling with the water table through a sink in its floor, and at 257 hectares it is the largest one left in Ireland. Geese fly in from Greenland to winter on it, and in spring the water goes.
Checked against the source on 2026-09-19.
Rahasane Turlough on the 3D model; tap a pin for its page and directions.
How it works
The turlough lies at 10 to 30 metres above sea level in two basins, joined at high water and separate as it falls, ringed by marsh, seasonally flooded meadows, limestone outcrops and scrub. Since the nineteenth century the Dunkellin River has been carried past it in an artificial channel, but part of its flow still goes underground through the natural sink into the limestone below. The southern basin is the more impressive.
Birds and a shrimp
The turlough is a Special Protection Area and a Special Area of Conservation, a staging post for migrating birds, the wintering ground of the Greenland white-fronted goose and one of the few known breeding grounds in Ireland of the Eurasian wigeon; garganey turn up, and American strays such as the American wigeon and European ones such as the black tern have been seen. The fairy shrimp Tanymastix stagnalis was first recorded in Ireland here. The model on this page pins Craughwell and its station.
Questions people ask
What is a turlough?
Where is Rahasane Turlough?
Written from Wikipedia, "Rahasane Turlough" (CC BY-SA 4.0), read on 2026-09-19, and from the OpenStreetMap places on the model. Nothing has been added from memory; follow the source for its footnotes.