Great Irish Roads No 7: R286/288 Lough Gill Some roads in this series pick themselves for inclusion on account of their location, character and history. Today's subject is one such road, and is a classic example of the type of road to be found in Ireland which combines an interesting journey with a beautiful and historic landscape
The R286 leaves Sligo town through its expanding suburbs and is for its first few kilometres quite a distance away from Lough Gill, which itself is eastwards of the town. When the lake does appear into view from the road, it is quite sudden and unexpected. Having embraced the lake, the road is everywhere smooth with a very good surface and meanders interestingly along the northern lakeshore. Lough Gill is surrounded by thickly wooded hills, and the first landmark reached is Parke's Castle, on the lakeshore at Fivemile Bourne.
Parke's Castle is a fine example of a 17th century fortified manor house, and stands on the site of an earlier stronghold of the O'Rourke family. The manor house was built in the 1620s by Robert Parke, whose father had settled in Sligo from Kent at the beginning of the 17th century. By now, the R286 has crossed into Co Leitrim and the remainder of our journey is in that county.
However, as in most of Sligo, it is impossible to escape the connection to Ireland's master poet, William Butler Yeats, who immortalised the tiny, somewhat unspectacular island of Innisfree which lies in the southeast corner of Lough Gill.
Having rounded the eastern end of Lough Gill, the R286 now swings northeast to continue its journey to Manorhamilton, while we continue along the lakeshore on the R288 to the pretty village of Dromahair. Before then, however, we round a small promontory marked by a spectacular outcrop of rock, around which the road swings through more than 90 degrees. Incidently, this spot marks a fine place to admire the views across this most beautiful of lakes.
Regular readers will know of my interest in milestones, those silent witnesses to our changing and evolving modes of transport down the centuries. Thus I was pleasantly surprised to find four such stones marking the western approaches to Dromahair. The first, sadly, was broken but the remaining three were in good condition and continued into the village itself.
Dromahair, which means the ridge of the air demons, is a small village on the Bonet River and lies south east of Lough Gill. Dromahair has associations with Saint Patrick and with one of the pivotal incidents in Irish history.
The seat of the powerful O'Rourke clan, it was the abduction of Dervorgilla, wife of the one-eyed Tiernan O'Rourke, by Dermott MacMurrough, King of Leinster in 1152 which led ultimately to the Norman invasion of Ireland in 1170. Somehow it seems hardly surprising that the sleepy village of Dromahair should have such momentous connections, for like so much of the Irish landscape, the road from Sligo to Dromahair winds not just through a beautiful landscape, but also through the pages of Irish history.