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The worlds largest enclosed urban park. It covers 1752 acres on the Northwest of Dublin. Phoenix Park was originally  a royal deerpark. Aras an Uachtarain , the presidents residence (formerly the Viceregal Lodge) is in the park , as well as the official residence of the US ambassador. The...

A Cistercian abbey , founded by Donal Mor O Brien in 1611. It is located in County Tipperary , and the abbey gets its name from a relic of the True Cross still housed there. It was rebuilt in the fifteenth century with patronage from the Butler...

During the Williamite War, on April 18, 1690, Derry (Londonderry) locked out James 2 with cries of " No surrender!" thus beginning the siege. Major Baker (replaced after his death by John Mitchelbourne) and Reverend Walker took over the command of the thirty thousand civilians, mostly...

North Western Europes most famous manuscript , containing illuminated copies of the Gospels , from circa 800. The Book of Kells was preserved in the Columban monastery at Kells , in County Meath , until 1653. Set up in the ninth century by monks from Iona ,...

Inland county in the province of Ulster, one of the six counties of Northern Ireland. Fermanagh (648 square miles) is one of the least densely populated counties in Ireland, with a population of 54,033. Bordered on the east by Monaghan and Tyrone, on the north...

Maritime county in the south-west of Ireland in the province of Munster. Clare (1,332 square miles) has a population of 103,333. The county is surrounded by water; the Atlantic Ocean to its west; Lough Derg, the largest of the River Shannons lakes, on its east;...

For many centuries , as everyone knows , English monarchs tried to impose their will on Ireland. Queen Elizabeth 1 , eager to extend the influence of her government , sent a deputy to Cormac MacDermot MacCarthy, who was Lord of Blarney , and demanded that...

The Blasket Islands are a group of islands off the Dingle Peninsula. Uninhabited since 1953 , the Blaskets were a mecca for linguists and anthropologists during the early years of the Gaelic , or Irish Language Revival (1905-1930). A large corpus of Gaelic autobiographies emerged from the...