Robert M Chapple, Archaeologist

As part of our Summer excursion to Donegal, I wanted to bring the family to see the incredible views from Horn Head. Back in 1989, when I was working at Tom Fanning's excavation at Rinnaraw , we used to walk out here of an evening. For the unwary, I would note that there are two different routes on this little jut of land. One brings you to this World War II lookout post with modest parking and spectacular views. The other fork in the road will bring you to equally gorgeous vistas, but will involve driving along a road that is literally terrifying - precipitous drops, no hard shoulder, and definitely zero space to allow two cars to pass. This is the route we took first and I'm not too proud to admit that I stayed in the car while the more adventurous members of the family walked about calmly outside like it was perfectly safe and I wasn't totally over reacting! anyway, once we got on the right path, parked and got to the crest of this little rise, the whole of Horn Head was...

I reckoned that was a headline that would grab your attention! Front view with distinctive Swastika I’ve just been sent this pair of photos from an old friend of mine. He tells me that the object washed ashore near Clifden, Co. Galway about a year or so ago. Unfortunately, the photos lack a scale, but the one where the object is being held should give some indication of its size. At a very rough guess, it appears to be about 85 mm long, and bears a very recognisable Nazi Swastika inside a pentagon ( c . 40 mm across). The side view shows that the pentagon seems to have acted as the head of a bolt for securing or tightening a wire or cable of some description. My friend suggests that it might have been used to secure sea mines, but I’ve no particular knowledge of Nazi engineering so I’m not able to either confirm or deny the theory. For this reason, I’m throwing this open to archaeological crowdsourcing in the hope of an answer! Many thanks, Robert M Chapple ...