Tag Archives: Ireland waterways rockville

After many long days, I have finished the pages for the Rockville Navigation. The material is spread across three pages, the second of which has lots of photos. You can access the pages from the sidebar on the right or from the Lost Irish waterways page (see above for the link).

I haven’t really finished it, though, because there are many gaps in my knowledge. If you can help to fill any of them, or if you find I’ve got anything wrong, please leave a comment.

I’m going to Co Roscommon tomorrow in the hope of being able to see what remains of the Rockville Navigations. I know the lakes are still there, and so are some of the connecting channels. On the early Ordnance Survey maps, only two of the channels are marked as canals; both of them are near Rockville House itself. There are also two subsidiary canals, one of which may have fed the fish ponds. Aerial photos show that at least one further stretch was canalised after the OS map was drawn, with a curved canal replacing a zigzag river.

What I’m most keen to see is the canal bridge that was near Rockville House itself (the house is now demolished). It may be the only stone structure that shows the width of the navigation (probably a lot less than the Grand and Royal Canals!), as there were no locks. I understand that the bridge still exists and that there is a date on it; that would be interesting because I haven’t yet found any information on the construction of the system.

If you can go to this page and line up the quarry (a white scar on the landscape) in the middle of your screen, then move down to the bottom, you’ll have two small lakes on the left and a bit of one on the right. You can see the channel connecting the rightmost lake with the middle one: it starts from the right as a curve, then becomes straight. About one third of the way along the straight section, a straight road or track crosses the channel, and I think the bridge is in there.

Note that that photo does not show the whole of the navigation.

I’m currently investigating the Rockville Navigations. Hugh Malet, in his book In the Wake of the Gods (Chatto & Windus 1970), describes a trip in a small boat on these navigations. He and Kay, his wife, started from Grange in the Carnadoe Waters (off the Shannon above Roosky) and had to work the boat up the shallows in the river. They got into deeper water and travelled through a series of small lakes, linked by some natural and some artificial channels.

Harry Rice shows the navigations on a chart he drew in 1960; there is a copy on the Heritage Boat Association website here. And there is a brief mention in one of the early Shannon guides. But apart from that, the navigations seem to have been forgotten, although some people have boated on parts of the system.

The navigations are shown on the early Ordnance Survey maps from around 1830, and the centre seems to be at Rockville House, which was owned by a branch of the Lloyd family, owners of thousands of acres in County Roscommon. If Hugh Malet was right, the main cargo was turf.