Ecclesiastical enclosure, Roscam, Co. Galway

Co. Galway |

Ecclesiastical Sites

Ecclesiastical enclosure, Roscam, Co. Galway

On the north-eastern shore of Galway Bay, a roughly D-shaped drystone wall, nearly two metres thick and averaging one and a half metres in height, encloses what amounts to a small world of early medieval religious life.

The enclosure at Roscam stretches approximately 200 metres north to south and 190 metres east to west, and within that perimeter are accumulated the traces of centuries of Christian practice: a round tower, a church, a graveyard, cross-slabs, a holed stone, and two multiple bullaun stones. Bullauns are boulder-sized stones with one or more rounded depressions worn or carved into their surface, and the pair here are particularly layered in meaning. Locally they were venerated as holy wells, yet the Ordnance Survey mapped them as a Penitential Station, a discrepancy that quietly captures the tension between official and popular religious observance that ran through Irish Catholicism for centuries.

The settlement is associated with St Odran, said to have been a brother of St Ciarán of Clonmacnoise, the founder of one of early medieval Ireland's most significant monastic centres. That fraternal connection, if accepted, places Roscam within a network of sixth-century foundations spreading across the Irish midlands and west. The enclosing wall, though massive, has been gradually heightened over time by the addition of field-clearance rubble, so what visitors see today is a palimpsest of the original boundary and generations of agricultural tidying. Scattered across the graveyard are architectural fragments that include bowtell mouldings, the rounded convex profile typical of Romanesque or later medieval window and door surrounds, hinting that at least one further church once stood within the enclosure, now entirely gone above ground. A possible leacht, a low commemorative stone cairn associated with early Irish monasticism, has also been identified inside the graveyard, and medieval graveslabs add to the density of devotional material concentrated in this relatively small area.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Ecclesiastical enclosure, Roscam, Co. Galway. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement