Half a mile upstream from Roe Park is a Holy Well within the current Roe Valley Country Park. Accoring to an old sign nearby: ‘reputed to be the spot where St Colmcille performed many acts of healing. Indeed, it is said to this day that the water from the well has healing qualities.’ Wow, this place is exactly what a place of ancient spiritual significance should look like. Places like this will have been venerated for many centuries and may even predate Christian times. The cut stone well surround is enclosed on three sides by the roots of a huge sheltering tree, itself of some age. There are no modern signs or clutter and the old path is largely obscured by leaves. The Northern Ireland Monuments and Buildings Record notes that ‘there was a tradition of monks coming here from Drumachose & Tamlaght Finlagan to hold services’.
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Behind the Roe Valley Resort is Mullagh Hill, reputed location of the Convention of Drumceat which was held in 575AD. This is famous because St Columbkille is recorded as having returned from exile in Scotland for the occasion and that his intervention saved the bardic tradition from being banished. Some accounts talk of him having strapped scottish turf to his feet as he had vowed never again to step on Ireland. The meeting was mainly about the political and military relationship between the king of the Dál Riata Áedán mac Gabráin who had land in the north of Ireland and the west of Scotland and the powerful overking Áed mac Ainmirech from Donegal. Colmcille was a close kinsman of Áed but he was also the leading religious figure among the Dál Riata where his island of Iona was located. The hill itself is thought to be largely natural though altered in parts to provide a flat rounded area at the top.
Roe Park House, now a hotel known as the Roe Park Resort, looks accross rolling lawns to the River Roe and Limavady and mountains beyond. Though entered to the side through a modern foyer, the original entrance remans in a projecting curved bay. The house was commenced around 1704 by a Captain Babington who called the building and estate Mullagh. It would have been two windows wide on each side of the entrance. Marcus McCausland aquired the estate around c1730 and changed name to Daisyhill. His son buit a dining room, out-houses and offices c.1782. Sir Francis McNaghten changed the name to Roe Park and further extended the front of the building in 1826 adding a drawing room. This brought the house building to its current very unusual length of 14 window bays, or 140 feet, long. The hotel development around the building is very large, but the historic building and much of its setting remain the dominant features. Roe Park Gate Lodge is half a mile further along at the entrance to Roe Park House (now the Roe Park Resort). Made of cut sandstone with an overhanging slate roof, it is a simple but elegant building. It was built around 1826 when Sir Francis McNaghten owned the estate.
Rough Fort sits adjacent to the original line of Clooney Road as it approaches Limavady. It is a well preserved circular earthwork known as a rath with an outer ditch and central flat area. When in use this would have contained dwellings and cattle with the ditch probably surmounted by a timber palisade fence. Such structures are very common accross Ireland and can date from earliest times. Often such features were planted with trees in the early nineteenth century to increase their prominence as a feature in the landscape. This was the case at here and at the crest of a small hill it is a very visible feature. The rath is in the ownership of the National Trust. It was its first aquisition in Northern Ireland donated in 1937 by local landlord, Marcus McCausland, also Chairman of the Northern Ireland Committee of the Trust at that time.
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