Great Irish Roads: A series by motoring historian Bob Montgomery
No 2: The R108 Ballyboughal to Drogheda
Some roads are meant to be driven, shall we say, briskly; others are born to be meandered. Today's subject is a road that repays a slow meandering drive along its length with glimpses of an ancient landscape, as the road climbs over successive hills and dales and houses betray their olden origins by lying nestled in sheltered hollows.
Yet this road, today lying between other newer and busier roads, was once the highway from Dublin to Newry and then on to Belfast, having been arrived by Glasnevin, Santry and Forrest, just west of present-day Swords.
Taylor and Skinner's 1778 map contained in their seminal work, Maps of the Roads of Ireland, shows a road that has hardly changed today, two and a quarter centuries later. It's a landscape that shows remarkably few signs of change, the most notable being the swathe cut by the new M1 motorway which intersects the R108 a couple of kilometres north-east of Bellewstown.
Leaving Ballyboughal village one soon arrives at the foot of a gently climbing hill, where in 1925 and 1926 the Drogheda Motor Cycle Club organised a popular motorcycle hillclimb. The event must have been more speed trial than hillclinb as the road chosen ran from the bridge below the present-day Hollywood Golf Club to the crossroads at Nag's Head, a distance of seven-eighths of a mile with a gradient of 1 in 35. Interestingly, reports of the event describe the finish at "Knagg's Head" crossroads - Knagg, I believe, was the name of a local family.
Having passed Nag's Head and the ridge which is Cabinhill, the road falls steeply into the village of Naul with its Séamus Ennis Cultural Centre, whose restaurant is a good place for a hearty Irish breakfast! Out of Naul, the stone-age passage tomb at Fourknocks is but a short diversion to the west of the R108. Its inner chamber is 21ft across, far larger than Newgrange, and is well worth a look.
The R108 now enters it's most attractive section, meandering across several hills which offer a surprisingly high view towards the sea at Balbriggan. In fact the highest point on the road is but 159 metres and later Mullaghteelin is some 148 metres above sea level. Neither hill is earth-shatteringly high but in what is generally a flat landscape they give surprising elevation and quite unexpected views to any motorist used to travelling north by the M1 or its predecessor, the N1/R132.
Here the R108 also passes the road to Bellewstown, the site of another hillclimb course in the 1950s and today noteworthy for its annual horse races. Soon afterwards the road drops down to intersect the M1 motorway before crossing the River Nanny and sweeping into Drogheda.
Just as the road reaches Drogheda, it turns sharp right past the old Church of Ireland. However, we finish our journey on the R108 by continuing straight on at this sharp turn, coming to Millmount, an 18th-century Martello Tower, although the mound on which it stands is probably of Celtic origin, and was later built up by the Normans into a huge motte.
In line with the road beside Millmount there are pedestrian steps leading down to the bridge over the Boyne into the heart of Drogheda. Taylor and Skinner's map shows that this was the original course of the road, leading to what was then the only bridge across the river. Indeed, this remained the road until, I believe, the 1920s, and was a notorious accident black-spot.
From Ballyboughal to Millmount is just 18.8 kms, a distance that takes the modern motorist on a short journey back in time over one of the most original ancient highways remaining in this part of Ireland.