ROADS AND ROUTES
ninth-century inland raids and for the purpose of estab-
lishing over-wintering encampments or longphortset-
tlements. Norse longphoirttended to be located either
at the mouth of a river, like Athlunkard on the River
Shannon near Limerick City, or at the confluence of
rivers such as those at Dubh Linn and Áth Cliath set
up in the Liffey estuary during the 840s and the alleged
stronghold of the Viking leader Rodolph at Dunrally,
County Laois, which was sacked in the year 862.
Five high roads reputedly emanated from Tara in
ancient Mide. The Slighe Mór followed the east–west
route of the gravel ridge known as the Eiscir Riada
between Dublin and Clarinbridge in County Galway.
The Slighe Dhála or Slighe Dhála Meic Umhóir was
the road from west Munster to Tara and formed part of
the boundary of north Munster on its southwest course,
which took it as far as Tarbert in County Kerry. It passed
through what are now the modern counties of Dublin,
Kildare, Laois, Tipperary, and Limerick. Its route in the
Laois area took in Ballyroan, Abbeyleix, Shanahoe,
Aghaboe, Borris-in-Ossory, and Ballaghmore. Créa,
after whom the Tipperary town of Roscrea is named and
through which the Slighe Dhála passed, was the wife
of Dála. The road is also known as Belach Muighe Dála,
a name that partly survives in the name Ballaghmore
(Great Road) given to the two townlands of Ballagh-
more Upper and Lower that lie just a mile and a half
west of the early medieval church site of Confert-Molua.
Slighe Assail connected ancient Mide with Connacht,
Slighe Mhidhluachra linked Tara to Emain Macha in
Armagh, and Slighe Chualann led from Tara to the south-
east. All five roads are attributed supernatural origins in
early medieval literature. Various legendary heroes are
attributed with the discovery of the roads as they traveled
to Tara to celebrate the birth of king Conn Céadcathach
at the Feast of Tara in the first century C.E. Surprisingly
little research has been done on this road system. In the
only comprehensive enquiry into the subject by Colm Ó
Lochlainn in 1940, he suggested that Cormac, son of Art
and grandson of Conn Céadcathach, could have been the
king who instigated the road-building program. Perhaps
what Cormac undertook was the construction of link
roads connecting Tara with a long-established country-
wide road system.
Irish archaeology has made a significant contribution
to our understanding of the nature of roads and routes
and, in particular, their association with early medieval
monasteries. Proximity to the great roads was apparently
an important influence in the choice of location for the
establishment and development of societal monasteries.
The monasteries of Glendalough, County Wicklow;
Clonard, County Meath; Clonmacnoise, Durrow, Gallen,
Lemanaghan, Rahan, and Tihilly, County Offaly; and
Clonfert, County Galway were sited on the route of the
Slighe Mór. Likewise, several monastic communities
established their foundations close to the Slighe Dhála.
Among those that developed into important ecclesiasti-
cal centers on that route were Aghaboe and Clonfert
Molua, County Laois; Monaincha and Roscrea, County
Tipperary, and Killaloe, County Clare. Evidence from
excavations suggests that the construction of networks
of lesser roads connecting monastic sites with the great
roads and other landmarks also took place in the early
medieval period. Many of these lesser routes are named
“Pilgrim’s Road” or “Monk’s Path” in local tradition.
Some of the more impressive remains of tócharshave
been found in association with the monastery of Clon-
macnoise. A gravel and flagstone road constructed and
used between 566 and 770 C.E. and then intermittently
until the second half of the thirteenth century was
uncovered during drainage works in Bloomhill Bog,
a short distance northeast of Clomacnoise. It formed
part of a larger network of routes focusing on the
monastery. A similar gravel road found in Coolumber
Bog appears to have been the principal western
approach to Clonmacnoise and may have connected
with a wooden bridge over the Shannon downstream
from the monastery. Substantial evidence for the
bridge was recovered during survey and excavations
in the late 1990s. It ran for a distance of approximately
160 meters and constituted about fifty oak posts each
up to 15 meters long driven 3 to 4 meters down into
the riverbed. Dendrochronologically dated oak trunks,
used as vertical timbers, suggest a date of 804 for the
construction of the bridge.
While roads and routes feature on sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century regional maps of Ireland, their
mapping was highly selective and generally related to
military activity. Roads were often marked only in the
context of routes followed by military forces which,
for instance, is the case with the roads depicted on
both John Grafton’s map of Mayo and Sligo (1586)
and on Richard Bartlett’s map of southeast Ulster
(1602). More commonplace roads in everyday use
tended not to be included in Elizabethan regional car-
tography. Routes might be noted in circumstances
where they traversed difficult terrain such as bogland
or where they afforded a pass through forest or a ford-
ing point on a river. A map of Leix-Offaly made
approxmately 1560 marks twenty-five passes through
bogland and woodland. It was not until the eighteenth
century that the network of Irish roads and routes was
more comprehensively addressed in cartography.
ELIZABETH FITZPATRICKReferences and Further Reading
Andrews, John H. “The apping of Ireland’s Cultural Landscape,
1550–1630.” In Gaelic Ireland c. 1250 c. 1650 :Land, Lord-
ship and Settlement, edited by Patrick J. Duffy, David Edwards,
and Elizabeth FitzPatrick. Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2001.