Rossport Walk is an easy 10 km long walk. It starts and finishes at Barr Thra crossroad. The estimated time is 2 hour 20 mins.

The track winds through the bogland and at the t-junction it bears right. Panoramic sceneries come into view and on the left in a field the Rossport Court Tomb can be seen. The track, running along a stone wall, reaches Rossport House, home of the Bournes family.

A diversion from the main track leads to the old pier built in 1891. The walk continues on the shore, which is tidal and well known for its delicious cockles, then it turns right at the estuary crossing the bog and leads to Barr Thra, the starting point.

DID YOU KNOW?

ROSSPORT COURT TOMB

Rosdoagh or Rossport Court Tomb laid in a field. It was built around 5000 years BC and bears a ruined central court with a diameter of about 9 m with survived 16 stones.

In the court presumably cremations and ceremonies correlated with burial of the dead took place.

A line of 33 stones delimited the perimeter of the cairn around 18 m in diameter. The site overlooks the sea where the Glenamoy River enters the Broadhaven estuary.

ROSSPORT HOUSE

Rossport House was built in 1832 by Samuel Bournes who inherited Rossport and neighbouring Muingnabo from his father George Bournes of Moyne.

The building was a substantial and commodious two-storey house with suitable offices and walled garden. In the Bournes Estate there was also an industrial knitting and sewing school, in which some of the tenants could attend.

The House was used as soup kitchen for the starving people in 1848 during the Great Famine. In 1851 he built also a chapel where the Methodists established themselves and a cemetery where some members of the family are buried.

In 1881 the Bournes family moved to Cambridge. In the 1920s it was made in a police station and then in a garda station until 1959, when it became a Gael Linn college, the predecessor of the current (secondary school) Colaiste Chomain in the middle of the village, until 1968.

Georgina Bournes was the last inheritor of the Estate. She sold part of the property to two local men and part to The Land Commission which divided it among the tenants.