Ros Cré · Co. Tipperary
Fourteen centuries of history, and the motorway went around it.
Roscrea exists because of a road. The Slighe Dála - one of the five great ancient highways radiating from Tara - ran through this gap in the Slieve Bloom foothills, and somewhere around 610 AD St Cronan planted a monastery beside it. That's the whole logic of the place: a crossroads, a monk, and a fourteen-hundred-year argument about which direction to go next.
What survives of that monastic foundation is still standing in the middle of town: a round tower cut down to 20 metres after rebels used it for sniping in 1798, the Romanesque west gable of the 12th-century church, a high cross - both housed in the restored Black Mills building - and a memory of the Book of Dimma, the 8th-century pocket gospel-book made here by a monk who, legend says, worked for forty days while the sun refused to set. The book is in Trinity College now. The town kept the story.
In December 2010, the M7 motorway opened and bypassed Roscrea completely. The through-traffic that had fed the Main Street pubs, hotels and roadhouses for decades vanished almost overnight. What was left is a town that has had to reckon with itself - quieter, a little frayed at the edges, but not without resource. The castle is OPW-managed and properly interpreted. The Cistercian abbey on the Dublin road has been here since 1878 and takes retreat guests all year. The place rewards slow attention more than it rewards a drive-through tick.
