Paul Malpas

For my sins and as General Secretary of the Connaught Rangers Association, I help to put together The New Ranger, an annual magazine for the Association members.  The Association’s purpose is to build up a data base of soldiers who served in the Regiment, one of the proudest regiments ever to serve in the British Army and to remember those men who died fighting for what they thought was their country.  The Regiment was disbanded along with several other Irish regiments in 1922 when Ireland gained its independance from England after having 2500 of its soldiers killed in the First War.

Whilst carrying out these duties just prior to the last edition going to press a strange thing happened to me.  I was editing a piece by a chap called Jack Fallon about the opening of a monument in a churchyard in Killure, near Ahascragh, in East Galway.  This monument was to the 12 men of the parish who gave their lives in the First War.  I thought I would tag their names onto the bottom of Jack’s report.   The last man on the list was Pvt. Matthew Wilson No7010 of 2nd Battalion Connaught Rangers and on the programme for the day it said the date of his death was 25th, 1915. No month, not sinister but just probably a typing mistake.  So I resolved to find out the month of his death.  By 1915 the 1st and 2nd Battalions, after both receiving a massive mauling in late 1914 had been amalgamated into one Battalion, yet the programme said he was with 2nd Battalion in 1915.  I noticed that he was buried in Guise Communal Cemetery, which was behind German lines for most of that war.  I googled Guise Cemetery 1915 and up came the graves of soldiers and a magnificent memorial to 11 English soldiers  who it said had been shot by the Germans on the 25 February 1915, and there on the list was Matthew Wilson, our man from Killure.

This started me thinking and I rooted through all the reports coming through for inclusion in the magazine and there was the story of these 11 men sent in by Hedley Malloch, who lives in Lille, in Northern France.  I felt as though fate had taken a hand and that I had to tell the story.  So with apologies to Hedley I will give my cut down version.

The party of 11 soldiers consisted of  five men from 2nd Connaught Rangers, five men from 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers and one man from 15th (Kings) Hussars.  On and just after the 26 August during the long and chaotic retreat from Mons in the first week of the war these soldiers were 11 of  literally hundreds of men who were cut off from the main Expeditionary Force and were captured by the Germans or escaped back through to their own lines or escaped back to England through routes opened up by Nurse Edith Cavell and her friends in Brussels.  These 11 had not succeeded in escaping but had followed the line of the German advance knowing this was going to be a quick war and as the saying went, “would be over by Christmas”.  They were sheltered by the people of Iron, a small village about ten kilometres north of Guise, from about 15 October 1915, having existed for the first two months by scavenging and living off the country  in a land of valleys, woods and great forests, a great place to hide.

Eventually as the winter progressed,  Vincente Chalandre, who had a mill in the village, brought them inside where they remained for some time.  Unfortunately as with every small community that had been sworn to secrecy there was a weak link in the chain and in a cauldron of envy, love, fear, and jealousy, this link broke, when an old man called Batchelet informed on the soldiers who were arrested on the 22nd February 1915.  No German records exist of what happened but early in the morning of 25 February after a night of beatings and general cruelty, the 11 soldiers and Vincente Chalandre were led out into the grounds of the Chateau at Guise and shot by firing squad, their bodies allowed to fall into a prepared ditch and they were covered over.

To be fair to the Germans this might not have been over-reaction.  Amnesties had been declared at least three times in their six months on the run and they had plenty of time to give themselves up, but it was on the top end of harshness by the Germans, however the women who were involved were all spared and given prison sentences. Bachelet the informer was arrested after the war but died in custody before his case came to court and to the end he was calling them deserters.  So these six Irishmen, three Yorkshiremen, one from Birkenhead and one man of Kent met their end through no fault of their own, perhaps they are still muttering and moaning like all soldiers do and wondering what to do next.  At least the people of Guise and Iron still remember them and Matthew Wilson has the added bonus of being remembered by the people of Killure.  An outstanding thing in Ireland where only now after 90 odd years are these brave Irish dead getting their sacrifice honoured.

The 11 soldiers were:-

Pvt Denis Buckley No 6240  2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers.  Born Cork.  Age 25

Pvt Daniel Horgan No 9582  2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers.  Born Cork.  Age18

Pvt Fred Innocent No 7845  2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers.  Born Bradford Age 27

Pvt John Nash  No 10084   2nd  Royal Munster Fusiliers, Born Sneem, Kerry Age 21

L/c James Moffatt No 7925 2nd Royal Munster Fusiliers Born Birkenhead Age not known

L/c John William Stent No 6943 15th(The King’s) Hussars Born Bromley, Kent Age 24

Pvt George Howard No 9381 2nd Connaught Rangers Born Sheffield.  Age 28

Pvt Terence Murphy No 8713 2nd Connaught Rangers Born Ballisodare, Co. Sligo Age 29

Pvt William Thompson No 9472 2nd Connaught Rangers Born Sheffield Age 24

Pvt John Walsh No 6594 2nd Connaught Rangers Born Tullamore, Co. Offaly Age 33

Pvt Matthew Wilson No 7010 2nd Connaught Rangers Born Ahascragh, Co. Galway Age 37

MAY THEY REST IN PEACE

Well fate definitely did take a hand, Hedley Malloch wanted to erect a monument to these forgotten men and worked tirelessly for a number of years with the townsfolk of Guise and the villagers of Iron and helped by donations from our Association and the Royal Munster Fusiliers Association, the stage was set. Land in the centre of Iron was granted and our own in house team of stonemasons Feelystone of Boyle designed, exported and erected this beautiful monument in time for the opening ceremony on Saturday 17^th September 2011

Twenty members of the association flew over for the ceremony and to a man/woman were moved/ amazed/shocked/delighted and flabbergasted at the kindness/generosity and welcome we received from the local French people.  Hedley Malloch had done everybody proud with the attention to detail and management of the whole day and the invitations he had prepared for all the right people.

We flew into France on the Thursday and visited the spot on the Marne River at La Ferte sous Jouarre about 40 miles from Paris where the German advance through France was stopped in September 1914.  On the banks of the river is a magnificent memorial to 3800 who died in those first few weeks of the war who have no known grave, including 50 Connaught Rangers.

The next day we were at Soupir on the River Aisne where the 2^nd Battalion got knocked about a bit when pushing the German Army back after their progress was arrested at the Marne but for every punch the Rangers took they gave ten blows back and the German casualties were a massive, 3000 plus.  It was here on 14th September 1914 that Acting Lieutenant Colonel Charles O’Sullivan, father of film star Maureen O’Sullivan, was badly injured and his brother in law Lieutenant John Irwin Fraser from Knockvicar, Boyle was killed.

Saturday was a lovely sunny autumn day when we assembled in the car park at Guise.  To our surprise three Scottish pipers in full  uniform jumped out of a car next to us, complete with bearskin hats, kilts and sporrans and started warming up there and then, the pibroch waking the town from its Friday night slumber.  It was as well that these pipers were not Scots but from Albert on the Somme and were big enough to fend off any shouts from the rudely awakened. Led by Hedley we marched to the bottom of the hill leading up to the Chateau where we were joined by the town’s brass band and about 100 townsfolk.  A quick hike up the hill with pipers and brass band taking it in turns to keep us in step brought us to the gates of the chateau where a contingent of Light Dragoons, which the King’s Hussars had morphed into and who were preparing themselves for Afghanistan after Christmas, were waiting with another 100 more townies.  Along with them were five Essex Regiment re-enactment men in 1914 uniform complete with standard issue Lee Enfield rifles and the standard bearers from 12 French military associations.

Though I say it myself, we made a fairly impressive sight as we marched through the gates of the chateau to the spot where the 11 soldiers and M.Chalandre were shot on that February morning in 1915.  It was from here that the remains of the soldiers and M. Chalandre were exhumed and reinterred in Guise Communal Cemetery in 1923.  There was a simple service and short speeches over a memorial stone, set in concrete and a last post was played by a member of the band.  We then marched off in true army style with pipers and brass band blowing their heads off, the French standards and ours carried by the indomitable Willie Beirne, fluttering in the Autumn breeze and about 250 people tripping along with true military precision at about 120 steps to the minute.  The music and the march were that impressive I felt like enlisting in some regiment there and then. Right down the main street of the town and through the well thronged market place with crowds cheering and clapping us all the way, we soon completed the mile march to the cemetery, where there were two more remembrances, one over M. Chalandre’s grave and one over the soldier’s tomb.

After the ceremonies, speeches and renditions of Les Marseillaise and Last Post, it was back to town in the same style and at the same pace, to L’Hotel de Ville, where the mayor and various civic dignitaries greeted us with a champagne reception and more speeches and exchanges of gifts.  It was an amazing and generous affair and it shows these people, whose families lives over several generations were ravaged by war, will not forget.  It was very emotional and I will always remember the streets of this little town, lined with people clapping and giving vent to loud hurrahs as we passed.  We really felt we were special people.

Then it was off to Iron, a little hamlet about five miles away, where the soldiers were protected and fed by the villagers and M. Chalandre for some months, before being captured by the Germans after a tip off from a cuckolded old man.  There was a similar array of talent with slightly more civilians than at the morning ceremony in Guise.  Assembly at the mill where the soldiers hid and then a sprightly march to the memorial in the centre of the village, past the site of M Chalandre’s house, which was burnt down as a German reprisal.  Many speeches and thank yous from various guests impressively translated by Hedley Malloch and then the memorial and a very impressive one at that erected personally by father and son Feeley, was unveiled by the very decent Barry Manilowe look alike, Mayor of  Iron.  Four rounds were fired over the monument as a mark of respect from the Essex Regiment and then into the village hall for another reception, this time with savoury pasties, local cider and pastis.  The villagers had got together a little museum of articles and photographs showing what the village was like under the German fist, all very interesting.  The highlight for us was meeting M. Chalandre’s grandson who was overcome with emotion to think that we, who had come so far, were remembering his grandfather.  The privilege was ours with the locals turning up in force to honour men of the Connaught Rangers.  They will never forget. Adieu a Guise et a Iron et les peuples de Picardie.

The following day we went to Verdun which is a story in itself and the trip finished with a quick trip around the Somme taking in Guillemont church where the Connaught Rangers are honoured for retaking the village and winning a Victoria Cross in the process and we finished off at Ronsoy Wood where the 6th Battalion were massacred on the 21^st March 1918 at the start of the Kaiserschlact, Germany’s last throw of the dice, which nearly succeeded except for the fact that they ran out of ammunition and then home to England, Ireland and Portugal after a very emotional and special experience.

With my recent burst of 1000 and 2000 word entries into the polemical world,  I was at a slight loss this morning on my subject or thought for today.  Until I read a piece in the realboyle.com blog, a quinquediurnal blog ably written up and produced by Mr Sean O’Dowd, who wanders round the highways and byeways of Boyle with camera, book and pen aiming to keep the local populace topped up with everything and anything that is happening in our little town and in a manner and with more of a christian attitude than our local paper,  the despicable and deplorable Roscommon Herald,  which seems to me to have a peculiar political and community agenda.

In realboyle.com yesterday was a nice piece on a lady,  Geraldine Gannon (nee Mcloughlin) who was celebrating having worked 25 years for Boyle’s premier accountancy firm,  Ahern & Co.   The article went on to portray the length of 25 years as being something beyond memory,  bringing up revered ghosts of the past as Charlie Haughey and Ronald Reagan,  who all did their bit 25 years ago.  This 25 years got me thinking and however much 25 years loyal service is, and as good Mrs Geraldine Gannon is at her job,  it all pales into insignificance when we start talking of 52 years loyal service to a business.    You might wonder how any one can work for the same company for so long but only a few weeks ago Mr Dermot Davitt was made redundant by his employer,  after 52 years of loyal, dutiful and considerate employment.  I read of no expressions of gratitude in our pitiful press or in fact in realboyle.com.  I heard of no celebrations by thankful employer,  in fact the whole 52 year episode ended in a deathly silence not even a whimper of thanks. Why that should be I do not know.  Perhaps 52 years of diligent and dependable service happens every week in North Roscommon,  but if you can show me another who has done the same I will doff my cap and if you find one no doubt they would have received a lot more praise and acclaim than Dermot got.

In this state that applauds itself for its social and community endeavours , this shoddy treatment deseves castigation. So in my own small wayI give you Dermot Davitt (1957-2009) 52 years in the service of a seemingly ungrateful employer,  52 years of unbroken,  steadfast and faithful employment.   A pillar of his local community, a magnificent father to his five daughters and a joy to his wife Catherine.   Dermot,  I have no prizes to give you but accept my heartfelt praises for your labours as I dredge up the ghosts of your years,  Eamonn de Valera,  Dwight Eisenhower and Winston Churchill.

Which make me think of something else I have noticed during my short stint in Boyle.   There seems to be two entirely different pools or stratas of Boyle society.   Those that have, or attain to have,  and those,  through no fault of their own have not got wealth.   The first strata cherry picks the second with much disdain and arrogance.   They use them as a convenience and they cannot see the willingness, generosity and gratitude of the second pool.   The reason why I mention it is because it is so much more pronounced here in Boyle than it ever was in any other place I have lived.    So perhaps if any of you clever,  articulate,  rich guys and some of you who might not be rich for much longer,  have had their social consciences pricked by this tale,  perhaps in the future you might just appreciate a little more the man on the rung of the ladder below you and stop standing on his head.

As yesterdays blog exhausted me I am today looking for the easy option and enclose an excerpt from my Memoir written in December 2005 when Ireland was still full of confidence and money, enjoying the ride on the Celtic Tiger’s back.

In September 2005 we put our Manchester house on the market and retired to Boyle in the County Roscommon, our chosen spot. Things were difficult for a while as we slowly realised our assets and we decided to go back to Manchester for Christmas, the last one we would probably spend in our home town, to tie up a few loose ends and make sure the kids were dealing well with our absence.  We were getting a little  perturbed by the fact that the house was not selling.  Bythis time it had been on the market for four months and not a bite. However the Lord was at hand.

Earlier on in that month we visited Helen’s aunt Aggie, a woman I had first met 36 years previously and had always admired.  She was at her house in Rooskey, in the townland of Cloonlarhan, a part of Ireland where Mayo and Sligo overlap and nobody knows where they really are. A fact the indigenous relied upon for any number of reasons.

Aggie is a splendid woman approaching her middle eighties and strengthened in her late life by years of hard toil, caring for her late husband Pake, her five children and a herd of milking cows. Her religion kept her young, it made sense of all the tragedies life had thrown at her.  She spoke a language that was 80% English and 20% Irish, you have to know her to understand her.  She is of a generation that threw away the English yoke that had governed but not broken her breed.

As I have said we had moved to Ireland some months previously, escaping the oppression Manchester was having on us and seeking a new life in which to spend our later years in a land the pair of us considered to be our spiritual home.  “Have you sold your house in England?” Aggie asked.  The house was a vast Victorian pile, seven bedrooms, built with servants in mind, in an outer Manchester suburb, favoured by the fortunate of those years as it was close to the railway line and far enough away from the stinking, disease ridden, inner areas of the city but handy enough for the managerial and executive positions, that Cottonopolis relied.

No serious buyer had been unearthed and we were begining to weaken in our resolve and starting to admit to ourselves that nobody in their right minds would want such a property.  It was like the Forth Bridge in its need of repair and decoration.

“The people hereabouts set great store by St. Joseph” Aggie added when we told her our tale of woe.  In her expansion on this theme it seems that the local populace of Maygo as we shall call it, on deciding to sell their house, would bury a statue of St. Joseph, face down, in the garden and, hey presto, the house would sell.  This theory had been poorly tested in Maygo as so very few houses changed hands.  In this rustic world properties passed from  generation to generation until they fell down and another was built.  In fact Aggie’s house was built by her father-in-law, Tom Bill Towey, in 1908 after a lucrative spell copper mining in Bute, Montana and before his wedding to Ann Hunt.  However Aggie’s beliefs won the day and I was not surprised, when a short time later Helen said that she was going to Carrick, to Mulvey’s, for a statue of St. Joseph.  Boyle, our chosen spot, besides not having a proper hotel or restaurant or swimming baths or any proper industrial base, alas has no sacerdotal emporium.

St. Joseph without purple gansey

Off she went calling at Lidl, Supervalu, Tesco and other grasping establishments spending the price of one of the many rooms in our Manchester abode.  Eventually she arrived at Mulvey’s, a shop set square in the centre of Carrick on Shannon, a bustling boom town, nine miles away.  Mulvey’s is a large many faceted shop selling nothing of any real use, but a very needful store through which a lot of the Celtic Tiger’s loose change was channelled.

“I have come for a statue of St. Joseph” Helen stated to the assistant who approached.  “Just walk along to the Religious Department and I will send Dympna down to you, she is our expert on these matters.  She is out the back.” Helen slowly made her way across the shop to be confronted by a vast serried rank, a rainbow of saints.  Dympna appeared brushing imaginary biscuit crumbs off the stately chest of her beautifully embroidered silk blouse.  “Well now, I know we have one, I saw him on Tuesday.”  The multitude of coloured idols did not faze Dympna as she scanned the holy regiment.  “No, he is not there” she said  “I will look in the store, he is around somewhere.”

“How can you tell so quickly?” Helen asked, nonplussed by the kaleidoscope of multi-coloured piety.  “Well its the colour, you see, they are all the same statue, a fellah in Dublin churns them out of the one mould, but each saint is painted a different colour, St. Patrick is green, St. Francis is brown, and so on, it is only the Infant is different” she said pointing to the top shelf and there sure enough was the familiar triangular statue of the Infant of Prague in his finest red cloak.  “What colour is St. Joseph then” Helen enquired of the gliding comfortable rear of the retreating Dympna.  “Well he is a lighter shade of brown than Francis, a kind of tan really, but he has a purple gansey” Dympna replied over her shoulder as she entered the store room.

Minutes later she returned clutching a purple figurine.  “Well I’m lost, I cannot find him anywhere but I know he is around.  However I’ve got St. Anthony here.  Let’s just say a prayer to him and Joseph will turn up some time today.  Call back after lunch and we will have him for you.”  Helen adopted the praying position and mumbled incoherently as Dympna in all her majesty, offered up prayers to Joseph’s wife, in order that her influence would steady Anthony in his quest.

Unfortunately pressing matters of a more secular nature clouded Helen’s path and she returned to Boyle, promising to come back the following day.  She told me the story after laying my lunch on the table and we both admired the simplicity of life before us.  I retold the story in Daly’s that evening and amid the laughter and the humour i saw a glint of belief in Geraldine’s eye.  Geraldine is Paddy Daly’s daughter, who for her sins has to serve the pagan 6o’clock brigade nightly.  Paddy who had worked his public house and bottling business for 55 years, was also the local auctioneer.  If any one would know the sincerity of this subject, it would be him.  At stages in his life he must have sold half the houses in North Roscommon.  He could, so the story goes, sell houses to tinkers.  “No, never heard that one” he said, when I enquired adding that I had heard it in Mayo an Paddy was after all from Newport way.  “It must have been East Mayo you heard it” not wanting to take the blame.

Unsatisfied I finished my pint and went to leave, “Paul, a minute” Geraldine whispered as she came out from behind the bar and escorted me out the door.  “I’m going to Sligo tomorrow and I’ll go to Veritas.  They will have St. Joseph there.  I’ll get him for you.”

Veritas, as you can tell by its title is upmarket holiness personified and not wanting to disappoint, I agreed to her offer.  To our surprise the following evening she knocked on our door in Abbeytown clutching an envelope and full of her experiences in Sligo.  We ushered her in, sat her down and listened to her story.  “I went into Veritas this morning and asked for a statue of St. Joseph and was told that although they had had a consignment of St. Josephs the week before, they were all sold out.”

“You are trying to sell your house are you?” said the assistant matter of factly.  “Well no, its for a friend, but yes, their house is up for sale and they are having problems selling it.”  “Well it doesn’t matter” the assistant interjected “I have the next best thing and they say it is just as good.”  Geraldine pulled out of the envelope a laminated prayer to St. Joseph which contained his picture all neatly done on a pink card and a St. Joseph medal attached to a white ribbon tied in a bow.  She apologised that her sortie had not provided better, we thanked her for her efforts and told her she would be thought of when we performed the ceremony in Manchester.

A couple of weeks later with Christmas approaching we arrived in Heaton Moor to spend what we hoped would be our last family Christmas in the city in which we had spent our whole lives.  However there was still this despairing feeling about the house.

The goose was cooked and the vegetables ready when Helen and I, our six children, one son-in-law and one grandson trooped from the kitchen to the chosen spot in the garden.  I, as my position dictated, with due ceremony and with thoughts of Aggie and Geraldine in mind, dug a hole with a trowel, and buried the medal and laminated card, face downwards.  The internment position had been carefully chosen, in front of the Buddha.  Some years previously Helen had bought a garden feature in the shape of Buddha and when connected to the electrical supply and a water reservoir would spout the same all day. This feature had not lessened in its performance from day one and we thought that if Joseph had had a bad day at the office, Buddha might just give him that lift.

Our Christmas festivities over, we returned to Ireland in the same state of limbo as we had been in for months.   Imagine our surprise a week later, when Katy, our second daughter, shouted excitedly down the telephone, “there is somebody interested in the house!”  A month later the house was sold, our fears were put to rest and our offer on a house in Boyle was accepted.

Now there are coincidences and different beliefs, I am saying nothing, but I am awfully glad I met Aggie Towey that Christmas in 1969, and I know for a fact that St. Joseph has had an awful lot of his time taken up recently being buried by the returning wild geese who have become party to this story.  Finally I would like to thank Geraldine for persisting when we were running out of steam.  THAT WAS TRUE BELIEF.

To divert away from yesterday’s theme I want today to try and paint a picture in words of the beautiful, rich and sometimes wild and rugged landscape that surrounds us here in Boyle and how that landscape formed the archaeological heritage we have today.  It is hard to understand how much the reader knows of the past and its timescale but if we assume that known human life in Ireland started approximately 8000BC with hunter/gatherers at the start of the Mesolithic, which lasted  to about 4000BC.   The Neolithic and farming began then and lasted until 2500BC.  The Bronze Age and the understanding of power lasted for 2000 years until 500BC and the Iron Age and mythology until about 500AD.  The Medieval period then and the start of written history lasted up until 1600AD. This inept summary should help the reader to understand the time frame to which I refer.

If we picture the map of North  Roscommon and place the Boyle River in its centre, running from left to right, or west to east or from Loch Gara to Loch Ce, 11kms of winding river starting placidly enough as it exits Loch Gara at Derrymaquirk, quickening up after the ancient ford of Tinnacarra, hurtling with force through the rapids at Assylin and quietening down again at Mockmoyne before forceably pushing down through the town to the Abbey and slowly coming to a halt in Drum to enable it to enter Loch Ce with a whisper. A fall in 11 kms of 23 metres.   At its western end Loch Gara is a shallow lake in normal times having been lowered in the 1950s by 3 metres with the blowing of the rock shelves at Cuppenagh and Tinnacarra.  The recent poor weather and floods brought the lake up to previous levels making it twice as large as it normally is and turning the Boyle River into a one km wide lake of water as opposed to its normal 20 metre width.  Loch Ce at its eastern end can be as much as 17 metre deep in its main navigation channels and this lake was risen by about 1.5 metres in 1847 with the construction of Knockvicar Lock and Weir which was done to improve the Shannon Navigation System. The Boyle River actually continues through Oakport and Eidin Loughs to meet the River Shannon one km north of Carrick town, but for the purposes of this exercise we will ignore this stretch of water interesting though it is.

The Boyle River and The Cistercian Bridge, Abbeytown

To the north of the river between the two lakes, the Curlew Mountains rise quickly, with Derrinoghron and Brislagh to the west and Sheegory leaning over Loch Ce to the east.  These hills are only 220-230 metres above sea level but historically have been notoriously difficult to cross, with many a fighting force coming to grief on its blanket bog covered slopes.  Not least the English forces under Sir Conyers Clifford who in 1599 marched from Athlone to put down a seige of Collooney Castle by the Donegal force under O’Neill.  The local boys led by MacDermot and O’Roarke soon put them to flight as they bunched up along the narrow path over the bog.  This Battle of the Curlews was the last time an English army was defeated in Ireland.

To the south of the river the land improves tremendously and throughout history the people who controlled this rich and fertile land controlled the area and from the 10th century onwards, Moylurg as this area was called and especially the Plains of Boyle, an upland plateau of about 50 square kilometres which offered some of the finest grazing land in Ireland was owned and kept by the MacDermot clan, but throughout the neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages this land was the place to graze cattle who were the currency of the day.

In these prehistoric times travel by land was almost non-existent, the River Shannon and its tributaries were the highways but gradually roads were formed for traveller and pilgrim going north and cattle drovers going south to the Plains and the fertile lands further beyond.  They were squeezed into a narrow channel between the two lakes because of the expanse of bog to the west and the River Shannon and the lake and river infested county of Leitrim to the east. So the north/south road Bothar an chorrain crossed the east/west road Bothar na Sliabe, the road over the Ox Mountains to the sea at Ballina, at Drumanone just 300 metres north of the Tinnacarra ford.  This crossing point and you would hardly notice it today was for over a thousand years the Spaghetti Junction of its time.  Just north of this crossing point the jewel in this areas archaeological crown, the Drumanone Portal Tomb stands. Not by coincidence has it sat there for 5500 years from the middle of the Neolithic but it was registering the ownership of the ford by some elite family group who were laying claim to this land 2000 years before the pyramids in Egypt were built. All its main megaliths are still standing with the capstone reputed to weigh 24 tonnes, however the cairn built around the megaliths has gone, taken by farmers for boundary walls.  The standing stone erected much later is a memorial to this tomb and the adjacent Bothar.

The Drumanone Portal Tomb

When you look at the web site constructed by the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government and go onto the maps showing the Archaeological Survey of Ireland and zoom into North Roscommon, each red dot is a site found on the survey.  To the north of the river the land is virtually red dot free until you come to the Bricklieves 12kms away whilst to the south of the river you cannot see land for red dots.  So historically the south side was the best side, I wonder whether  is the same with every east/west river system?

So let us start with Loch Gara and its entrance into the Boyle river.  Certainly 2500 years ago this was a well populated place and had been for a 1000 years previously and possibly up to 1ooo years ago.  So for 3500 years this was the place to live, the D4 of its day.  Christina Fredengren in her marvelous book Crannogs published by Wordwell in 2002 which recorded her in depth survey of the area and in particular the crannogs built on this stretch of water found plenty of evidence of Neolithic life and even remnants of 20th century poteen making on the many crannogs she surveyed.

Crannogs are manmade islands on lakes and rivers formed by piling fill material into a cofferdam construction of timber piles driven into the bed of the water.  These islands rose out of the water and were protected by a timber palisade fence and were used for a variety of purposes but I suppose in the main were a place of last resort when confronted by an hostile force, surrounded as they were by water. They were not permanent homes, these being the ring forts that cover the country, but a retreat for the wealthy who could afford to build these costly structures.  They were primarily used from the end of the Neolithic until the end of the first millenium AD and in some cases into the 16th century.  So when Fredengren found 18% of the known Irish crannogs, some 180 number in just a few kilometres of river and lake, it has to be assumed that this area was a place of power, wealth and prosperity.

A Crannog on Loch Gara

Nowadays so few people live at this end of the river, with hardly anyone living round the lake, with Monasteraden the only village, about one kilometre from the lake.  In fact there are probably more archaeological sites than people.

At the other end of the river Loch Ce, originally a volcanic site, stands beautiful and brooding, its waters ruffled only occasionally by local pike fishermen in their lake boats and cabin cruisers coming up through Knockvicar Lock to Rockingham and Boyle Harbours. It has no Neolithic or Bronze Age connections and does not spring into life until Early Medieval times just as Loch Gara was fading into a backwater.  What caused this sudden shift in fortunes?  Well I suppose you could say Christianity.  St. Patrick came to Boyle twice, so the Annals tell us, but really Columcille, who is considered by many to be the saviour of the western Christian Church, came here in the 550s AD prior to his leaving for Scotland and founded the Culdean monastery of Eastmacniere on Church Island on the west side of the lake and the church at Drum about one kilometre up the Boyle River.  These Culdee monks lived for 650 years in these foundations before being replaced by the missionary orders sent by the Pope, to reform the laxity of the Irish Church in the 12th century.  The Augustinians made their home at Inchmacniere, the Premonstratensionists built their abbey on Trinity Island, the Cistercians in Boyle and the Franciscans at Knockvicar.  With these foundations came the people and the lake side and country round it was soon cluttered with ringforts (the house of choice for many for a thousand years from 500AD onwards.

These monks ruled the roost along with the Gaelic chieftains until Elizabethan times when the Reformation and Plantation families came over from England to change things around. The local plantationer was the King family and Loch Ce became its playground as they speckled it with follies, hunting lodges and houses and managed the land round the lake admirably and much of what they did can be seen to this day.

So having jumped from one end of the river to the other, a quick trawl downstream between the two expanses of water,  reveals older treasures. We have mentioned the crannogs and their long historical use and the portal tomb at Drumanone all of which would be missed by all but the intrepid traveller. In fact in this whole litany of archaeological sites there is not a sign or a notice of their existence. The Irish Authorities faced with this absolute plethora of sites tend to be rather blase and like water allow the sites to find their own level.  You could live round Boyle for years and know nothing of its riches.  Further downriver on its southern side are a chain of trivallate ringforts all along the northern approaches to the plains. These trivallate forts were the homes of royalty for it is only those people that could call on the vasselage or the markers that would bring in the labour to construct these massive structures and today they lie in farmers fields slowly being flattened by cattle, only preserved this long because the poor country folk thought them the homes of fairies.  To the north of the river, at Ballylugnagon is a large ringfort with a commanding view over the river and Assylin, the ancient ecclesiastical centre where St. Patrick was supposed to have stopped on his journey to see St. Attracta at her hostel in Killaraght.

To the south of the river at this point is possibly the most important collection of barrows in the country. Barrows are Iron Age earth structures in different configurations which are supposed to be the burial places of important people, but so little work has been done on them archaeologists cannot be sure. The chain starts at Lugnamuddagh and runs in a southwesterly directio through Knockadoobrusna, where two have been destroyed by the Golf Club, and on through the Plains, through Corbally to Killaraght.  With possibly the most important one at Knockmeeliagh at the north east end of this chain, about 100 metres north of the N4 Trunk Road.  This is a bowl barrow on a hill overlooking Loch Ce and standing as a sentinel on the northern edge of the Plains.  It contains some 3000 cubic metres of earth and must have been the burial plot of a very important contemporary of Christ.  The river then flows through the town to the the obvious treasures of the 12th century Abbey and attendant bridge before flowing out through the townland of Drum and into Loch Ce.  Incidentally the main bridge in the town is in its third creation since 1750AD, the previous two fell foul of the waters, whilst the Cistercian bridge at Abbeytown is exactly the same structure as when it was commissioned in 1220AD both taking HGV wagons on a daily basis and both sorely tested by the volume of water they let through last week in the floods.

So with over 2000 words in today’s blog, I now need a rest. Adieu (more…)