Rossmore Forest Park
Rossmore is the closest thing Monaghan has to a landmark you can walk around inside. It is about 320 hectares of Coillte forest laid out over the grounds of a nineteenth century estate whose house no longer exists, roughly three kilometres south west of the town, and it is free. Most people in Monaghan have been dozens of times. If you have an hour here and no plan, this is where it should go.
Getting there and parking
The main entrance is on the R189, the Newbliss and Threemilehouse road. From the town take the N54 towards Clones, turn left onto the R189 where it is signposted for Newbliss, and the entrance is a short distance up on the left. It is a five minute drive. It is also about forty minutes on foot from the four squares, and there is a footpath along the Threemilehouse road for much of the way if you would rather walk out than drive.
The car park is large and there is a height barrier at the main entrance, so a tall van or a roof box may not clear it. There are toilets, picnic tables and a big weatherproof map board at the car park, and usually a coffee hut, though it is not the sort of thing to plan a day around. The park is open in daylight hours. Check before you travel if you are coming any distance.
The trails
There are around nine marked routes, colour coded, all starting from the car park end. The shortest is an accessible loop of well under a kilometre on a hard surface, half an hour at a stroll. Above that there is a woodland loop of about a kilometre and a half, several lake loops running between roughly one and a half and three and a half kilometres at an hour or so each, and the full Rossmore Loop at eight kilometres, which takes about two and a half hours.
The trail names have changed over the years and the maps online do not all agree with each other or with the signs on the ground. Photograph the board at the car park before you set off and follow the colours rather than the names.
The lakes and the trees
There are several small lakes and watercourses through the park, all of them made rather than natural. Barn Hill Lake has a viewing point reached on a tarmac path from the car park, which is the easiest thing here to get to with a buggy or a wheelchair.
The estate planting is the other reason to come. Scots pine, cedar, monkey puzzle and redwood stand among the ordinary commercial conifer, and the rhododendron and azalea put on a real show in late spring and early summer.
The yew avenue, the walled garden and the mausoleum
An avenue of yews about half a kilometre long runs from the walled garden towards the family mausoleum, and it is the single most striking thing in the park. The walled garden is still walled and still there, though it is a garden in outline now rather than in flower. There is a pet cemetery in the grounds, along with a fish hatchery, a reservoir and the remains of the hydraulic ram that pumped water up to the house. There is also a court tomb, which is a few thousand years older than any of it.
Rossmore Castle
Warner Westenra, second Baron Rossmore, began a Gothic house here in the 1820s and his son extended it repeatedly. It ended up with well over a hundred windows in dozens of different shapes, and the drawing room was reportedly enlarged five times over a competition with the Shirleys at Lough Fea about who had the largest room in the county. Dry rot took hold after the Second World War, the family moved out, and what was left was taken down in the 1970s.
What survives is the terrace, the entrance stairway and the buttressed lower walls, in trees uphill from the walled garden. It is on the castle trail and it is signposted, but it still takes some finding. The view south from the terrace is the best in the park. Do not expect a ruin in the picturesque sense. It is a footprint.
Conditions
Bring boots. The paths are good but this is drumlin country and it holds water, and the lake loops stay soft for days after rain. In winter the short accessible loop is the only one that is reliably firm underfoot.
The rest of it
There is a large playground, expanded in recent years, and a sculpture trail of oversized wooden pieces that children take to more than adults expect. Rossmore Golf Club, an eighteen hole parkland course, sits alongside the park.
Coillte’s own page covers facilities, and Monaghan Tourism lists the walks with distances and times. Rossmore is one of several things to do in and around the town on the things to do page, and there is more on the county’s other trails under walks near Monaghan.
Details on this page last checked . If something here is out of date, it probably is our fault rather than yours.