Highlights•Lakes and peatlands provide contrasting records of volcanic ash deposition.•Generally, we see more tephra layers in peatlands than lakes.•Tephra shards show no chemical alteration in either lakes or peatlands.•More basaltic tephra layers are found in lakes which act to concentrate shards.•We report two new distal Icelandic tephras in Ireland (CLA-L1) and Sweden (SN-1). AbstractDespite the widespread application of tephra studies for dating and correlation of stratigraphic sequences (‘tephrochronology’), questions remain over the reliability and replicability of tephra records from lake sediments and peats, particularly in sites >1000 km from source volcanoes. To address this, we examine the tephrostratigraphy of four pairs of lake and peatland sites in close proximity to one another (