archaeological & built heritage assessment - The Heritage Council

In the time of James I, Jamestown was made an important stronghold using the natural defences afforded
by the river. It was granted a royal charter and surrounded by a strong town wall. Sir Charles Coote built
a castle within the walls in the 1620s but it changed hands several times and eventually fell into ruin. There
are fragmentary remains of this castle by the river. Jamestown had also been the site of an ancient
Franciscan friary; a chapel lay inside the walled area but the old graveyard and church, still visible today,
were outside the walls.
However the history of this area goes back a great deal further than these seventeenth century activities.
In prehistoric times the land enclosed by the fast flowing river offered a good strategic site for defence
purposes. Using some natural high ground near the present Jamestown Bridge, a linear earthwork, known
locally as ‘The Doon’, was raised across the base of the loop. Clear indications of portions of the Doon
can be traced adjacent to the road extending towards the main road from Corlara Bridge, a bridge
located approximately halfway along the Jamestown Canal.
The early navigation engineers took the obvious course of making a canal to by-pass the rapids in the
river, parallel to the old Doon but some distance beyond it. This canal was completed in the 1770s; it was
S-shaped with a lock about halfway between Corlara bridge and the present lock (Albert lock). When it
was inspected c. 1794 for the Directors General of Inland Navigation, it was noted that they were forced
to make bends in the canal because of the hard rock which had been encountered. There was a fall of 5ft
3in at the lock, which was 66 ft 6in long and 14ft 3 in wide, about half the size of the present lock (ibid.).
Although in good condition, but like all the Shannon locks at this time, the gates were ‘greatly out of repair’
(ibid.). Eventually the gates were replaced, the lock was raised 9 inches and the banks of the canal
strengthened. The Shannon Commissioners decided to enlarge and straighten the canal when they
commenced the major works in the 1840s; by this time the techniques of blasting through hard rock had
been greatly improved. The site of the new lock was moved further down the canal and is now known as
Albert lock.
The river winds up past Annaduff Church, a nineteenth century Church of Ireland church with a backdrop
of trees built on the site of the eighth century Annaduff abbey; the ruins of which are on the site of an
earlier ecclesiastical settlement. In this area there were also mills associated with Drumcree and the
Cavan and Leitrim railway line also serviced the town of Mohill located c. 8km east of Drumsna. Drumsna
bridge was not replaced by the Shannon Commissioners but although it was only underpinned some years
ago it succumbed to heavy traffic and had to be rebuilt. The Shannon navigation passes through Lough
Tap, Lough Boderg and Lough Bofin as it makes its way along Dromod and Roosky. The harbour at
Dromod was constructed in 1829; Francis Nesbitt of Derrycarne donated the land and contributed
towards the cost. The Board of Works lowered the wall of the harbour to suit the modern cruisers and,
more recently, constructed a new harbour beside it (Delaney 1987). The canal and lock at Roosky were
built in the 1760s and, unlike all the other early locks, this one was never rebuilt or altered.
In terms of archaeology, Area 4 is covered by RMP map sheets Roscommon: 11, 12, 18 and 24 and
Leitrim: 31, 32, 35 and 37 (see Appendix 1). In total, there are ninety-three recorded archaeological sites
located within Area 3, consisting of bridge sites (2) / ringforts (36) / rectangular enclosures (2) /
enclosures (16) / crannógs (4) / earthworks (11) / linear earthworks (4) / churches (5) / graveyard / castle
site / mound (2) / bullaun / cairn / fortified house site / historic towns (Carrick-on-Shannon & Jamestown)
/ and fulachta fiadh (4). Similar to Areas 2 and 3, this portion of the waterways corridor was also heavily
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