Overview
There is no visitor centre at Cloonahee, no car park and nothing ticketed – it is a farming townland a few kilometres north of Strokestown in County Roscommon. What makes it worth knowing is a single sheet of paper. During the Great Famine the starving tenants of Cloonahee put their case in writing to their landlord, Major Denis Mahon, and that document – the Cloonahee Petition – became one of the threads that led, more than a century later, to the founding of the National Famine Museum.
The Cloonahee Petition
When the businessman Jim Callery came across the petition among estate papers at Strokestown Park, the discovery moved him to create the National Famine Museum there. That is the real reason to make the connection in your head as you pass through: the words of Cloonahee’s poorest tenants, written at the worst moment in the parish’s history, are now the heart of how Ireland tells the story of the Famine. To see where it leads, go to the museum at Strokestown – the townland itself keeps its history quietly.
Cloonahee House
The townland’s other landmark is Cloonahee House, a detached three-bay two-storey country house built around 1890 and listed on the national heritage record. It has a hipped slate roof with rendered chimneystacks, over-sailing eaves on a bracketed course, and rendered walls with ruled-and-lined detailing and quoins; a canted bay window and a tripartite window break up the front, reached by limestone steps. The stable block carries a carved keystone dated 1862 – older than the house itself – and the outbuildings run to a coach house, stables, a gate lodge (extended in 2003) and decorative cast-iron entrance gates. The remains of a tower and a walled garden sit in the grounds.
One thing to be clear about: the house is a private home. You can take it in from the public road, but the grounds are not open, so don’t plan a walk around them.
Getting there and nearby
Cloonahee lies off the minor roads north of Strokestown; the town is the practical base, with the National Famine Museum and Strokestown Park its main draw. Further afield in Roscommon, Elphin Windmill is a restored 18th-century tower mill, and Boyle Abbey is a substantial Cistercian ruin about half an hour away by car. Frenchpark makes another short detour to the west.