Road - road/trackway, Curraghadoon, Co. Roscommon
Co. Roscommon |
Roads & Tracks
In a low-lying corner of County Roscommon, a section of ancient roadway survives in the landscape at Curraghadoon, preserved not by grand circumstance but by the quiet accident of topography and partial burial.
What makes it quietly arresting is the relationship it holds with the ecclesiastical site beside it: the road does not simply pass the old church enclosure, it predates at least one phase of it, and the two features have left their marks on each other in ways that reward close attention.
The surviving stretch runs roughly west-north-west to east-south-east for about 100 metres, with a travelled surface approximately 2.2 metres wide, defined on either side by paired earth and stone banks. Those banks are themselves between 2.3 and 2.5 metres wide, standing to an internal height of around half a metre and somewhat higher on the outer face, between 0.65 and 0.75 metres. Beyond the banks lie silted drainage channels, suggesting the road was deliberately engineered rather than simply worn into the ground over time. Just west of the ecclesiastical enclosure, the road bends southward for a further 21 metres before the evidence gives out. The relationship between road and enclosure is the most telling detail: at its northern edge, the road truncates the enclosure boundary, indicating the roadway was in place before that boundary was formed or reformed; at the eastern end, however, a bank associated with the ecclesiastical complex cuts across the road, suggesting later activity worked around or over it. The whole cluster of features, church, enclosure, and road, sits on a gentle slope running down to the north and east.