Extract from

Journey to Connaught 1709

Samuel Molyneaux

Having gotten out of this miserable village (Kilconnell) we rid 4 hours thro’ a fine champain country; no enclosures, generally good land, yet pretty good roads. We pass’d thro Killtollagh and came to ye ancient Burrow of Athenree: it is all wall’d, and makes, with its old round towers on ye walls and other old buildings within, a very venerable appearance and pretty prospect, it being built on green fields and not a house without the walls; it seems to have been of old a well inhabited and thriving town on account of ye large pav’d stretts and many ruin’d houses which remain; it has nothing but new cabins in it, and those so few they have room for all ye gardens too within ye walls which I am told enclose more than Dublin walls and at least 33 acres. Here we met Sir T. Montgomery, who seeing us gaping strangers invited us in to have a look at his improvements which are pretty and whimsical enough: part of his house is ye wing of the old Abby repaired which makes an odd and convenient house. He has here set up a napping and tucking mill, and designs a weaving manufactory, the in habitants of the town being, as he tells me, almost all weavers and cottoners.

As you go out of town to Gallway you meet with a pretty new improvement of Mr Shaw’s. From hence you travel thro’ a barren gravelly soyl to Gallway in 4 hours