County Roscommon
Ros Comáin
- IrishRos Comáin
- ProvinceConnacht
- County townRoscommon
- Local governmentRoscommon County Council
- Area2,547 km²
- Population70,259 (2022)
- Highest pointSeltannasaggart southeast slope, 412 m
The smallest farms
In 1900, 82.8 per cent of holdings in Roscommon were under thirty acres. No county named in the record had a higher share.
Small farms do not divide. One heir took the land and the rest went.
Roscommon lost people at every census from 1841 to 1971. It grew a little through the 1970s and early 1980s, then fell again, and its count reached bottom in 1991, at 51,897.
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Boyle Abbey
A Cistercian monastery founded in the twelfth century by monks from Mellifont, under the patronage of the MacDermotts. It was one of the most powerful Cistercian houses in Connacht.
Cromwellian forces occupied it in 1659, by the Office of Public Works' date, and did great damage. Afterwards it housed a garrison and was damaged again.
It is still well preserved. The gatehouse is now the visitor centre.
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Douglas Hyde
Born at Castlerea on the seventeenth of January 1860, the son of a Church of Ireland rector who moved to Frenchpark in 1866.
He learned Irish by talking to country people at Frenchpark. He collected their songs and stories, and set down the names and places of the people he had them from. Love Songs of Connaught came out in 1893.
On the twenty fifth of November 1892 he gave a lecture, The Necessity for De-Anglicising Ireland. He founded the Gaelic League, and resigned its presidency in 1915 when it voted to become a political organisation.
He was the first president of Ireland and declined a second term. At his funeral in 1949 Catholic politicians and officials stayed outside the cathedral.
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Roscommon fell at every census from 1841 to 1971, grew a little after that, and reached its lowest count in 1991.