Our modern landscapes are host to a great number of ancient monuments such as medieval castles, churches, and period houses, yet many less romantic relics remain invisible and forgotten, even to those who live close to them.

I refer to old roads which have become a largely forgotten part of our built, cultural, social and commercial heritage.

Once at the centre of communication and business, they are now often out of sight and out of mind, unfashionable in today’s narrowly-focused tourist-driven heritage economy – an indication, perhaps, of our increasing landscape amnesia.

Above-ground evidence for ancient roads and routeways is patchy. Most prehistoric roads have been erased by time, but occasionally Late Bronze Age trackways, or tohars, are uncovered in bogs, and a later Early Medieval pilgrim routeway from Tara to Galway is still recognisable where it snakes along the raised ridges of glacial eskers near the River Shannon at Clonmacnoise.

From the 18th Century onwards, many roads were abandoned as a modernising economy required new road networks to transport goods and services more economically and efficiently between growing towns and cities.

Many of these older roads now lie silent and forgotten, but remain as unintentional linear natural heritage sites abundant with wildlife.

By comparing satellite imagery with old maps, we can still make out their routes as they crossed valleys, hills and river fording points.

Built to assist horses pull smaller and lighter coaches over hills, some roads remain part of our current network today whilst smaller, discarded segments have become farm lanes or tracks through bogs.

As the economy expanded, so too did the need for heavier wagons to transport greater loads, and new roads were built to flatten gradients and to go around drumlins rather than over them, as before.

Thus, guided by modern satellite imagery and the 1732 Herman Moll Map of the Principal Roads of Ireland, I set out to find the 300-year-old Garrison to Belleek Road.

Still surprisingly continuous and visible along its full north-south length of about six kilometres, it can still be made out alongside modern field boundaries and lanes about 500m to the east of, and parallel to, the current road built in the mid 1800s to replace it.

Before setting out I also noted from the 1860 Ordnance Survey map, that about a mile north of Garrison was a cluster of 16 neatly spaced domestic buildings in the townland of Aghamuldowney.

Marked as ‘Newtown’, the houses were connected to the 1732 road and nearby school via a short lane.

An earlier 1830 OS map showed a smaller and unnamed cluster of houses, so the houses were named Newtown between 1830 and 1860.

Phone conversations with local people also revealed that no-one had heard of it. This was going to be an interesting walk.

Correlating information from a map to an actual place on the landscape is always revealing, and so it was for Newtown.

The position of the derelict houses, lane, school and road were accurate, as was the extensive field system surrounding the cluster of houses.

Serendipity took a hand too, as domestic, and agricultural machinery were uncovered in the undergrowth, including a horse-powered rotary milk churn machine and stone-carved gate pillars.

Further desk research on census returns away from the scratchy green undergrowth and seemingly relentless rain showed that people came and went, some buildings collapsed, others were reused as farm outhouses, and that the last owner resided there within living memory.

However, the answer as to who named Newtown and connected it to the superhighway of its day may be found in papers held by the Ely Estate, the landowner at the time.

The field system around the village may also be evidence of a general landscape enclosure pattern in Ireland developed by landlords from the mid 1700s to the mid 1800s, but with pre-Famine origins.

Today’s Newtown and its impressive well-preserved bank and ditch field boundaries are shrouded with conifers.

A many green-hued place of mystery and dereliction where only barking deer and screeching sparrowhawks break the silence.

Without doubt, the roads less travelled are the most interesting. Perhaps, with the help and imagination of local communities and historians, this old untravelled road might be brought back to life as a walking and cycling route between the villages.

I would like to thank local people and landowners, Belleek historian Joe O’Loughlin, the family of Garrison historian Pat McGuinness, and Gaby Burns for their assistance. Always ask local landowners for permission should you wish to visit monuments or features in the landscape.

This, and previous Impartial Reporter articles, can be read at https://notes-from-the-field.blog.