The November 6 Irish & Scottish Reads follows four investigations into the way places acquire their histories. At Aberlemno, a familiar monument has concealed fragments of other carvings. In Cork, an estate building opens a question about political secrecy. Belfast’s proposed C.S. Lewis project asks how a family home might become a public resource, while a geological investigation revisits the Scottish connection to Stonehenge’s Altar Stone.
These are different kinds of reading: an excavation announcement, historical analysis, original local reporting, and a university account of a scientific study. Read them with those distinctions in mind. A promising interpretation is not the same as a settled conclusion, and a restoration proposal is not an attraction already open to visitors.
Terry’s Pick of the Week: What Lay Beneath Aberlemno III
New findings revealed under Aberlemno III after excavation: Historic Environment Scotland, November 5, 2026. Institutional press release; no individual byline.
Excavation around Aberlemno III revealed a fragment of an older Pictish stone bearing what appears to be part of a salmon motif. It had been reused to support the monument’s base. A carved human head was also recovered from the topsoil, while possible earlier settings raise questions about the stone’s orientation and movement.
The announcement is valuable because it leaves those questions open. The head may be early medieval, but its relationship to known monuments remains uncertain. The base has gone to Edinburgh for analysis; the release does not establish public display arrangements for the new finds.
Why choose this as Terry’s Pick? It makes a familiar heritage problem unusually tangible: the object visible today may be only one stage in a much longer story. For readers visiting carved stones or researching a parish landscape, the useful habit is to ask about reuse, relocation, and excavation history before treating a monument’s present position as original. Photographs and confident labels are starting points, not substitutes for context.
An Exploding Icehouse and a Cork Estate
The mystery of the exploding icehouse in Cork in 1886: Matt Ryan, RTÉ Brainstorm, displayed update October 30, 2026. Original publication date unconfirmed.
Ryan begins with a destructive explosion at Lakelands, east of Cork city, on July 18, 1886. Two men and a dog died in the ruined icehouse. Contemporary reporting described a striking reluctance among people nearby to explain what had happened. Ryan considers the likelihood that dynamite associated with the Irish Republican Brotherhood had been stored there.
The estate belonged to William Horatio Crawford, a philanthropist, collector, and heir to the Beamish & Crawford brewing dynasty. Ryan draws on Crawford’s books, educational connections, and support for Queen’s College, Cork to examine his political interests. His library included writings by Rousseau and earlier dissenters. These details complicate the picture of a wealthy Protestant landowner, but they do not establish his involvement with the explosives.
Family historians often encounter this kind of gap: a dramatic event survives in print, but witnesses say little and motives remain elusive. This selection rewards attention to the difference between what a report records and what a historian reconstructs. Read for the method as much as the mystery, and resist turning a plausible association into an accusation.
A Belfast Family Home and the Lewis Legacy
Belfast church to transform C.S. Lewis’ grandfather’s home into exhibition, library and café: Mark Robinson, The Irish News, November 1, 2026.
Robinson reports on plans for the Old Rectory at St Mark’s Church on Belfast’s Holywood Road. Built by Lewis’s grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Hamilton, the house was also the home of Lewis’s mother, Flora. The proposed restoration combines an exhibition with a library, community café, learning spaces, and a writer’s retreat.
The report earns its place through direct interviews and attention to the building’s condition. It is not simply a celebration of a famous name. Fundraising and restoration are still required, and November 2028 is an aspiration rather than a confirmed opening date. Suggestions linking childhood surroundings to Aslan should be understood as the project’s interpretation.
A particularly worthwhile detail is the proposed library named for Flora Hamilton. The plans recognize her intellect and influence alongside her son’s literary achievements. Exhibition rooms, seminar spaces, and the café would give the building several uses, rather than limiting it to a literary memorial. For readers interested in historic houses, Robinson’s report shows the practical decisions behind bringing a neglected family property into community use. It is a project to follow, rather than a finished stop to add to an itinerary.
The Altar Stone’s Scottish Connection Remains a Question
Mystery origin of iconic Stonehenge Altar Stone deepens as search narrows: University of South Wales, November 5, 2026. Institutional research announcement; study led by Duncan Pirrie.
This university account describes a study of Stonehenge’s Altar Stone using its structure, minerals, chemistry, and isotopic characteristics. Researchers compared observations of the monument with fragments held in museum collections. Searches in northeast Scotland’s Orcadian Basin have not yet located material matching the full set of characteristics.
That is narrower than declaring that a Scottish origin has been disproved altogether. The researchers describe a better geological fingerprint and a continuing search, not a newly identified quarry. The linked piece is the university’s account of research published in the Journal of the Geological Society.
For heritage readers, this is a useful exercise in reading a negative result. Eliminating a proposed match can be productive without establishing another answer. The same discipline serves genealogy: a record that does not fit may narrow a search, but it cannot automatically identify the right person. Spend time with the qualifications, especially when a headline seems to promise that a long-running mystery has finally ended.
Keep the Conversation Going
The best heritage reading gives us more than facts to repeat. It helps us recognize how evidence is gathered, how an explanation changes, and where uncertainty should remain. This week’s four pieces offer that kind of attention without requiring readers to be specialists. If you write or discover substantial original work on Irish or Scottish genealogy, history, records, archaeology, language, music, folklore, museums, or heritage travel, please suggest it for a future issue. Include the original link and publication date, and tell us what makes the work worth a reader’s time.
Support Irish Scottish Roots
Found this article helpful? Buy me a coffee to support the research, writing, and free travel tools at Irish Scottish Roots. Your support is optional, and the articles and itinerary checkers remain free to use.
Discover more from Irish Scottish Roots
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.