The dark, biscuit-coloured tower of Jerpoint Abbey, with its battlements, rears above a bend on the road South from Thomastown. The Abbey is one of the most awesome religious remains in Ireland, yet, because many of its domestic arrangements are still recognisable, it also gives...
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A single small tower is all that remains of the castle where, during the late 16th century, the poet Edmund Spenser lived. In 1580 he had gone to Ireland as secretary to the Lord Deputy, who was in charge of crushing the rebellious Irish population....
Once a freebooters’ stronghold, on a tongue of land that projects into Sheep Haven, Doe Castle dates from the early 15th century. Its name is an anglicised version of the Irish word ‘tuath’, meaning district or territory. In the 1440s it fell into the hands...
Standing like a giant mushroom on three uprights is a 5000 year old tomb with a huge capstone, known as ‘The Giant’s Load’. Local legend claims that the capstone, which weighs some 46 tons, was placed there by a giant. In fact it was probably...
Now a thriving market town this was once the formidable power base of the Earls of Desmond. Their Kerry headquarters, the supposedly impregnable ‘Castell of the Island’, is today and ivy-covered stump, seen on the right as the town is entered from Killarney. Castleisland is...
Little is left of this once great Abbey, founded in 553 by St Columba, or Colmcille. The Venerable Bede called it ‘a noble monastery known as Dearmach, the Field of Oaks, because of the oak forest in which it stands’. Though it was plundered and burnt...
To the North of this little farmland village stand the imposing Gothic ruins of Lislaughtin Friary, built in 1478 by John O’Connor Kerry. This once-magnificent friary stands in verdant countryside, ivy-clad and roofless, its tower and cloisters gone and bushes growing out of its centre. But...
At the top of a winding inlet is the lively market town, laid out 1614 by the 1st Earl of Cork. The tall-spired Catholic church dominates the square. The handsome Presbyterian church, built in 1861, was converted into a post office after its once prosperous...
A dramatic 150ft rock outcrop crowned by the ruined walls of Masg Castle (or Dun Masg) soars above the low Laois countryside. Before the arrival of St Patrick in AD432, the rock and surrounding land were the property of the O’Moore clan chieftain Laois Ceannmor,...