Sean Mooney was just eight years old when a big, black car – he says it looked like a hearse – pulled up outside his family’s farm in Doogarymore, Co Roscommon.
He remembers Dr AT Lucas, the renowned archaeologist from the National Museum, coming in that car and hoisting the big wooden wheel that Sean’s father John and uncle Richard had just uncovered in the bog, and putting it into the station wagon to take back to the museum in Dublin. The wooden wheel was found by John and Richard Mooney in 1969, when they were cutting turf with a sléan.
The brothers, both now deceased, were conscious there may be ancient treasures in the bog as they had uncovered a similar wheel the year before, but it had quickly disintegrated. This time they knew to cover the wheel with peat and straw to protect it before it went into the safekeeping of the museum.
The National Museum later dated the wooden wheel to 400BC, Ireland’s oldest wheel technology, one of the most significant Bronze Age bog finds, and since then on permanent display in the National Museum.
The momentous find is commemorated in Kilteevan Community Centre with a replica of the wheel created by one of the Mooney family and donated to the community.
The discovery certainly made the Mooney brothers famous in the area; Sean recalls how his father was often teased that he was “a very wealthy man”, now that he’d found a Bronze Age wheel.
“I remember Dad saying, ‘No, no, no. I donated that to the museum’. But I remember a letter. He said a letter came at the time with a token gesture of £20 from the museum.”
His Dad, Sean recalls, was very proud to know the wheel was in the museum for everyone to see, and that the brothers were well aware of their history and the significance of the find: “They definitely were going there with the hope of finding something, particularly after the 1968 one; because he told that story, they went there with a purpose.”
You can see the Doogarymore wheel, uncovered by the Mooney brothers in 1969, on permanent display in the National Museum, Kildare St, Dublin. If you ask, you can also have a guided tour of the bog exhibitions, but do ask in advance.
