Much of Glenullin bog that remains today would have been familiar to the different cultures that have populated the valley throughout the millennia. The pre-Christian Iron Age and Christian people of the Middle Ages that built their forts, raths and ritual cairns on prominent locations on hill-sides and drumlins must have gazed in awe at the large domed mire from which they could never wrest control. From their vantage points they might have watched raptors descend from Lisnascreghog (‘fort of the screech-owls) to the bog in search of prey. Later, in the last few centuries, the inhabitants of the single-storey, thatched vernacular dwellings that dotted the valley sides sunk their turf spades to slowly nibble at the edges of the bog, eventually revealing the stumps of oaks that once filled the valley.

Today, in modern bungalows with their big front windows the people of Glenullin can relax in the comfort of warm homes and enjoy the open valley with eyes focused on the dark mass of the bog. To lose the bog to commercial exploitation would be to strip the Glenullin valley of its heart, the focal landscape unit that all eyes, past and present, have gazed.

The valley which surrounds the bog and the hills beyond are a valuable historical landscape. That landscape is one of continued human intervention and it can reveal a great deal about human history to the landscape archaeologist and historian.

It is fortunate that the prevailing agricultural regime has tended to favour the preservation of significant elements of the historic landscape.

There are few places in the British Isles where our prehistoric past can be easily read from the modern landscape. However Glenullin is one such place. The early farmers of Ireland have left us such monuments as Tamnyrankin Court Cairn and Knockoneill Court Cairn and Passage Grave (excavated in the 1940s and again in the 1970s).Immediately prior to or at the transition to a metal producing age (the Bronze Age) such monuments as the Cullbane Stone Circle, one of the oldest such monuments known in Europe, were built. This monument has been damaged but has been repaired and is now in public ownership.