Historic town

The National Monuments Service's description

On a NW-SE peninsula (max. dims c. 1.3 km NW-SE; c. 600m NE-SW) enclosing c. 54 ha on the W shore of Lough Ree, at a central and narrow point of the lake. There may have been pre-Anglo-Norman settlement on the peninsula represented by the promontory fort (RO046-004001-), a church at the graveyard (RO046-004023-), the rath (RO046-004035-). The O'Conor kings may have used Safe Harbour and its nausts (RO046-004040-) on the NE shore in the 1150s when they maintained a fleet on Lough Ree, although there are no references to this.
In 1200 John de Courcy used the peninsula as a base in Connaught, but the development of the town, which never had a charter, began in 1227 when Turlough O'Conor and Geoffry Marshall commenced building the castle (RO046-004002-) of Rindown. The only reference to murage is in 1251, and burgesses from 1244 to 1310 when the rent amounted to £5, suggesting that there were about 100 families resident. The town suffered a number of attacks until 1342 when it was described as being in Irish hands, after which references cease until 1544 when the castle may have been in ruins as only the Crutched friary (RO046-004005-) is mentioned and continued to be described into the 17th century.
The town wall (RO046-004004-) was built c. 1250 and the principal thoroughfare probably led from its gate to the castle. A hillshade aerial survey of Rindoon conducted in 2015 by Simon Dowling shows a street running NW from the castle towards the shore at the S end of the wall with what may be some property divisions running N from it, but the entire area between the castle and the town wall is overlain by NE-SW furrows that are parallel with the current field walls. There are numerous references to ships at Rindown, utilising a port at Safe Harbour just N of the castle, where a slipway (RO046-004031-) survives. Apart from the promontory fort (RO046-004001-) the other visible remains consist of the Castle (RO046-004002-), the parish church (RO046-004003-), a windmill (RO046-004006-), the town wall (RO046-004004-), the friary of the Fratres Crucifere (RO046-004005-), and four house sites (RO046-004007-; RO046-004008-; RO046-004009-; RO046-004010-). (FitzPatrick 1935, 177-80; Thomas 1992, vol. 2, 185-6; Doran 2005, 392-3)

Since 2009 a conservation programme has been developed by the St. John’s Parish Heritage Group and Roscommon County Council, with Blackwood Associates as the conservation architects. It aims to make the area more accessible to visitors and to stabilize the principal architectural monuments. The work is funded largely through grants but there have been significant private donations. Work concentrated on the church of the Crutched Friars in 2009. An early achievement was the establishment of a 4.5km walk that was opened in 2010. Since then work has concentrated on conserving the town wall, the parish church, and the windmill. (Collins 2013)

Compiled by: Michael Moore

Date of upload: 24 August 2010

Amended: 20 April, 2015

References

FitzPatrick, Capt. J.E. 1935 Rindown castle, county Roscommon; with a comparison of the systems of fortification used in Ireland in the 12th and 13th centuries. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland vol. 65, 177-90.

Thomas, A. 1992 The walled towns of Ireland, 2 vols. Dublin. Irish Academic Press.

Collins, R. 2013 The Rinn Duin project. Journal of the County Roscommon Historical and Archaeological Society 12, 27-32.

Doran, L. 2005 Aspects of Anglo-Norman secular settlement in Longford and Roscommon c. 1300. The Irish Sword 24, 361–410.