Rossin, Co. Meath — an Unofficial Place
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Rossin, Co. Meath — An Unofficial Place By Bryn Coldrick February 2019 Preface This article is based on my M.A. Local History thesis research, which was published by Four Courts Press in 2002 as part of the Maynooth Studies in Local History series. A version of this article was presented at the Irish Post-Medieval Archaeology Group (IPMAG) Conference at The Enniskillen Hotel, Enniskillen, on 10 February 2019. I would like to acknowledge the assistance and support of Dr Richard Clutterbuck and Ed Danaher of AMS, Frank and Mary Taaffe of Rossin, and IPMAG in my representing of this work. If you would like any further information, please don’t hesitate to contact me through our website, www.ancestralvoices.ie. The illustration of Monknewtown (Rossin) Mill on the front cover is from the records of the Incumbered Estates Court as made available online at Find My Past (www.findmypast.ie) © Bryn Coldrick 2019 1 Rossin, Co. Meath — An Unofficial Place Rossin is a small rural community in northeast County Meath midway between Slane and Drogheda, just inside the border with Louth which is formed by the River Mattock. Rossin lies on the edge of the Boyne Valley World Heritage Site, which contains the Neolithic passage tombs of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth as well as some 90 additional monuments. Rossin is not a townland or a parish, nor can it be considered by today’s standards a town or village. It is, however, a community; a community which overlaps the boundaries of three official townlands (Monknewtown, Balfaddock and Dowth) and two parishes (Monknewtown and Dowth). Being an unofficial place, Rossin is labelled on few maps, certainly not the Ordnance Survey maps of the nineteenth century, even though the name was very much in use by then. Rossin is also largely invisible in the traditional archives because so many records were constructed on a parish and townland basis. According to local folklore, Rossin is the general name given to part of Monknewtown and Balfaddock adjoining. … Some people say Rossin was the owner of the mill, but my grandmother said Rossin was a wicked caretaker who lived in the mill yard and used [to] prevent the people from going to Mass.1 But it turns out that the placename and the community existed more than a century before the mill, which was built in the 1820s, whereas the earliest reference to Rossin I know of dates to the 1720s. So if Rossin didn’t come about because of the mill, what are its origins? Rossin is centred on the medieval church of Monknewtown, which was a grange (or outlying farm) of Mellifont Abbey. Mellifont was the first Cistercian monastery in Ireland, established in 1142, and by the time it was dissolved in 1539 it held up to 11,000 acres of farmland throughout much of the Boyne Valley. The Cistercians divided this land into independent farms or ‘granges’ which were managed by teams of lay brethren. This is how places like Newgrange, Sheepgrange and so on got their names. Other granges in the area included Knowth and Balfaddock. 1 The Schools’ Collection, Volume 0713, Page 500. National Folklore Collection, UCD. Available at: https://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/5009005/4976163/5114345?ChapterID=5009005 [accessed 19/02/2019]. 2 Rossin, Co. Meath — An Unofficial Place Plate 1. Monknewtown medieval church (February 2019) The grange began as a group of farm buildings, but in many cases developed into a small settlement similar to the manorial villages of the Anglo-Normans. Monknewtown literally means the Monks’ New Town and there seems to have been a settlement in the Rossin area since medieval times. In 1612, Monknewtown was described as ‘the town, village and hamlet of Rathmiskin’ (the term ‘rath’ indicating a pre-Cistercian, Gaelic presence) and it contained seven stone houses and ten cottages. The Anglo-Norman invasion also brought secular settlement to the area, in particular at Dowth. In medieval and Early Modern times, Dowth parish contained many of the centres of settlement and human activity in the area, specifically at Dowth Manor (a settlement which included a 15th-century tower house and church), and other settlements like Craud and Proudfootstown which had a mill on the Mattock. But Dowth started to decline from the mid-seventeenth century, and by the end of the eighteenth century the focus of activity had shifted to Rossin on the border between Monknewtown and Balfaddock. 3 Rossin, Co. Meath — An Unofficial Place The appearance of Rossin as we see it today largely came about during the reorganisation of landed estates following the Battle of the Boyne, fought not far from Rossin on 1 July 1690. With the resulting Williamite land settlement, new Protestant landowners reorganised the estates granted to them, and the relative stability that followed the battle provided the necessary climate for long-term improvements, including the gradual enclosure of the former granges and the subdivision of this land into farms of various sizes. By the late eighteenth century, Monknewtown was the sole Irish estate of the earl of Sheffield, John Baker Holroyd, who came from a Meath family and was friends with the Fosters who had transformed their own estate around Collon, a few miles north of Rossin. The Fosters helped Sheffield improve his estate at Monknewtown. John Foster, who was the last Speaker of the Irish House of Commons, made his mark nationally by bringing in a ‘Corn Law’ which offered a bounty on the transport and export of corn and placed restrictions on imports. This turned Ireland from a pastoral into an arable economy and created profitable estates for wealthy landowners like himself and his friends. In 1724, another local landlord, Charles Campbell of Newgrange, issued a lease to one Edward Hall “of Rossen” over some land in Balfaddock. We know from parish registers that by the late eighteenth century people often gave their address as Rossin, rather than the townlands in which they officially lived, which indicates that the community was well established by this time. Gravestone evidence and Grand Jury records also show that Rossin was a recognised place in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and was again being referred to as a ‘village’ and even a ‘town’. Nor was it just a settlement of farmers and labourers. Even before the arrival of the mill, other activities took place here, including the licensed sale and consumption of alcohol by the early 1800s. Educational and spiritual needs were also being met in Rossin before the end of the eighteenth century with both a pre-Emancipation chapel and a school of some sort in place. 4 Rossin, Co. Meath — An Unofficial Place Plate 2. Late medieval window fragment over a doorway in Elland near Rossin, possibly originally from Mellifont Abbey The most significant development in post-medieval Rossin was the building of Monknewtown (or Rossin) Mill in the 1820s. This was not the only, or indeed, the first great mill in this area. In the 1760s, a very extensive flour mill was built in Slane (5km west of Rossin) at a cost of £20,000 and proved very successful. So it’s a little surprising that the earl of Sheffield, who wrote extensively on Irish agriculture and economics, was opposed to a mill being built at Monknewtown, citing technical concerns about the location. In 1809, he wrote to Col. Thomas Foster that: … A millrace cannot be formed without raising a weir. … Much damage will ensue to the neighbouring land, especially where the unruly river Mattock is in greatness.… The project went ahead after the first earl’s death under a lease agreement between his son (George) and Townley Blackwood Hardman of Drogheda in 5 Rossin, Co. Meath — An Unofficial Place 1825. Under this lease, the mill had to be built within two years and a ‘good bridge’ within one. Figure 1. Monknewtown (Rossin) Mill in 1856, from the Incumbered Estates Court sales brochure (www.findmypast.ie) A total of £7,000 was spent building Rossin Mill and its associated premises which included stores, offices and an overseer’s house. With a thirty horsepower waterwheel system, it was good for at least eight months of the year. By 1837, steam power had been added to act as a backup during periods when the river was low. Described as a ‘neat five storey building’, it had six pairs of stones (three for oats and three for wheat) and storage space for between four and six thousand barrels. It also had three kilns for drying the corn before grinding.2 Mills have always been important to their surrounding communities as a buyer of grain and a source of flour. But despite its impressive size, Rossin Mill probably did not provide direct employment to any large extent. Technological advances during the second half of the eighteenth century allowed even the 2 Samuel Lewis (1837), A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland. London: S Lewis & Co.; and the Incumbered Estates Court Rentals (www.findmypast.ie). 6 Rossin, Co. Meath — An Unofficial Place largest mills to operate with a minimum number of employees. Slane Mill, for example, kept farmers busy over a ten mile radius, but only directly employed a dozen or so people. A miller from Navan boasted that he could raise a barrel of wheat every two minutes without the cost of a single labourer to carry it! But the arrival of the great mill in Rossin must have had an enormous impact on the local community, not just in terms of employment, but also on the character of the area given the nature and scale of the buildings.