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OLD TOWN

CO. ROSCOMMON · IE

Old Town
An Seanbhaile, Co. Roscommon

The Ireland's Hidden Heartlands
STOP 06 / 06

An Seanbhaile · Co. Roscommon

A crossroads hamlet between the Suck and the Shannon, on the back road to Shannonbridge, with a church, a closed post office, and not much else - and that is the truth of it.

Old Town is small enough that the honest thing to do is say so. It is a crossroads hamlet in the townland of Cloonfad, in the old parish of Moore, in the half-barony of Moycarnan - the soft bottom corner of Roscommon where the county runs out into Galway and Offaly. The Irish name, An Seanbhaile, simply means the old settlement, and there is an old settlement's worth of it: a church, a scatter of houses, and a road going through.

The land here is the giveaway. This is callow country between the River Suck and the River Shannon, flat and low and given to flooding, good limestone underneath and bog at the edges. Moore parish was always reckoned arable but poor in the old surveys, a place of small farms rather than big houses. The road you are on, the R357, is the back way between Ballinasloe and Shannonbridge, and Old Town is the part of it you would not notice if the church were not there.

Do not come looking for a village in the postcard sense. The post office, run by the Kenny family for generations, closed in January 2008, which tells you most of what you need to know about the trajectory of a place like this. What you get instead is the Church of Our Lady of the Rosary at Clonfad, the quiet of the callows, and the sense of how most of rural Ireland actually sits on the map - not in the named towns, but in the townlands between them.

If you have found yourself here, you are almost certainly on your way to somewhere with a name on the brown signs. Shannonbridge and Clonmacnoise are a few minutes east across the Shannon, Ballinasloe and its October horse fair a few minutes west. Old Town is the breath between the two. Take it for what it is.

Population

A few dozen, in the townland of Cloonfad (no separate census figure)

Walk score

A crossroads on the R357 - five minutes on foot is the whole of it

Founded

Parish of Moore, half-barony of Moycarnan; chapel at Clonfad recorded by the 1830s

Coords

53.2986° N, 8.1222° W

01 / 06

At a glance.

Three things every local will eventually mention. Read these and you've already understood more than most day-trippers do.

01 The place

A crossroads in the townland of Cloonfad, parish of Moore, south Roscommon.

An Seanbhaile, the old settlement. It sits on the R357 between Ballinasloe in Galway and Shannonbridge in Offaly, on the flat callow land where the River Suck runs down to meet the Shannon. This is the bottom corner of Roscommon, closer to two other counties than to its own county town.

The letter → 02 The church

Our Lady of the Rosary at Clonfad, the chapel the village grew around.

The Roman Catholic parish of Moore has long kept a chapel at Clonfad and another at Moore. The Church of Our Lady of the Rosary at Clonfad, beside Old Town, is the one that gives the hamlet what shape it has. Mass, a graveyard, and the road past the door.

Stories & lore → 03 The bigger places

Shannonbridge six kilometres on, Ballinasloe a few miles back.

There is no pub, no shop and no bed in Old Town itself. The pint and the dinner are in Shannonbridge, where the Shannon is crossed and Clonmacnoise sits on the far bank, or back west in the market town of Ballinasloe. Old Town is the quiet middle of that drive.

Where next →

02 / 06

Stories & lore.

The reason to come back. The things every local will eventually tell you about, usually after the second pint.

The chapel that anchors the hamlet

Our Lady of the Rosary, Clonfad

The Roman Catholic parish of Moore has kept two chapels for the best part of two centuries - one at Moore and one at Clonfad, the latter sitting right beside Old Town. The Church of Our Lady of the Rosary at Clonfad is what gives the crossroads its reason to be a place at all: a parish church, a graveyard, and the cluster of houses that any rural Irish chapel gathers around it. The Established Church built its own neat church in the parish in 1825 under the Board of First Fruits, but it is the Catholic chapel at Clonfad that the village still turns out for.

Callow country, and an army that crossed it

Between the Suck and the Shannon

Old Town sits on the low ground where the River Suck drains down to join the Shannon, the kind of flood-meadow callow land that defines this whole corner of Roscommon. It is quiet ground now, but it was once strategic. In July 1691, in the campaign that ended at the Battle of Aughrim a few miles south in Galway, the Williamite general Ginkel marched his army across the Suck in this district - Aughrim was the bloodiest battle ever fought on Irish soil, and the roads through Moore parish were part of the approach to it. The water that floods the fields here in winter is the same water that decided where armies could and could not move.

The GAA club that holds the parish together

Pádraig Pearses

If Old Town belongs to anything larger than itself, it belongs to Pádraig Pearses. The club was formed in 1962 as an amalgamation of the old Moore and Taughmaconnell junior clubs, draws from the parishes of Moore, Taughmaconnell and Creagh, and plays in red and white out of a pitch at Woodmount near Creagh. In a place this scattered the football club is the social spine - it is how the townlands between Ballinasloe and the Shannon know themselves as one community at all. Pearses have been a serious senior force in Roscommon football in recent years, which counts for a great deal in a parish with no town to call its own.

03 / 06

Things to do outside.

Wear waterproofs. Bring a sandwich. Tell someone where you're going if it's the mountain.

The R357 callows stretch There is no waymarked loop here, only the country road. Walk the R357 east from Old Town toward Shannonbridge and you are on the flat callow land between the Suck and the Shannon - wide skies, wet fields, wading birds in winter, the bog at the margins. Quiet, flat, easy underfoot, and honest about what south Roscommon actually looks like. Mind the road; it is narrow and cars move on it.

As long as you like, out and backdistance

30-60 minutestime

Across to the Shannon at Shannonbridge The real walk is at the end of the road. Six kilometres east, Shannonbridge carries the R357 over the Shannon on a long 18th-century stone bridge, with the Napoleonic-era artillery fort beside it and Clonmacnoise visible upriver. Park in the village and walk the bridge and the riverbank. This is the destination Old Town is the prelude to.

6 km to the riverdistance

Drive it, then walk the bridgetime

04 / 06

When to go.

There is no bad time. There are different times.

Spring

Mar-May

The callows dry out, the fields green up, and the back roads are at their best. The right time of year to potter the Suck-and-Shannon country with Clonmacnoise as the prize at the end.

◉ Go

Summer

Jun-Aug

Long light over flat land, and the easiest driving. Pair it with Shannonbridge and Clonmacnoise across the river, or the Ballinasloe side to the west.

◉ Go

Autumn

Sep-Oct

October brings the Ballinasloe Horse Fair a few miles west - one of Europe's oldest - which is the one time of year this quiet corner has a genuine event worth planning around.

◉ Go

Winter

Nov-Feb

The callows flood, as callows do. The land between the Suck and the Shannon goes under water in a wet winter and the roads can be miserable. Atmospheric for the birds, less so for the visitor.

◐ Mind yourself

05 / 06

What to skip.

Honestly? Don't bother.

If a local was sitting beside you, this is the bit where they'd lean in.

Expecting a village

Old Town is a crossroads with a church, not a street of shops and pubs. There is no pub, no cafe and no shop in the hamlet itself. Come knowing that, or be disappointed for no good reason.

The closed post office

The Kenny family post office shut in January 2008. It is mentioned because it mattered locally, not because there is anything to see. There is not.

Making a special trip

Nobody should drive across Ireland for Old Town alone. It earns its place on the map as the quiet middle of the road between Ballinasloe and Shannonbridge-Clonmacnoise. Treat it as the journey, not the destination.

Getting there.

By car

Old Town is on the R357 between Ballinasloe (Co. Galway) and Shannonbridge (Co. Offaly), in the south of Co. Roscommon near where the Suck meets the Shannon. Ballinasloe is a few minutes west on the same road and sits on the M6 (Dublin-Galway); Athlone is roughly 25 minutes east. There is no public car park - it is a roadside hamlet.

By bus

There is no scheduled bus through Old Town itself. The nearest hub is Ballinasloe, on the Dublin-Galway corridor with Bus Éireann and Citylink coaches and an Irish Rail station on the Dublin-Galway line. Local Link Galway Roscommon Mayo covers rural routes in the wider area on limited timetables.

By train

No station. The nearest is Ballinasloe on the Dublin Heuston to Galway line, a few minutes west by car. Athlone, the bigger junction on the same line, is about 25 minutes east.