The county town Roscommon is an important road junction and a good touring centre. It mainly occupies the southern slopes of a gentle hill, and took its name and origin from St. Coman, who founded a monastery here in early Christian times.
The name Roscommon (Holiday Apartments, Roscommon, Ireland) comes from the combination of the Gaelic word Ros, which means wooded and St. Coman, who was a famous saint that established a monastary there in the 6th century. Dominican monks later founded an abbey in place of the monastary during the 13th century.
Northern Roscommon was the sovereign dominion of the Mac Dermot clan, and Southern Roscommon was ruled by the OKelly clan. The Norman occupation had a minimal influence on Roscommon (Self Catering, Roscommon, Ireland), and the later Crowellian confiscations and divisions excluded all of Connaught, except as the new refuge for displaced Irish from the east.