This castle stands above the Cam-cor River and dominates the town of Birr, County Offaly. If you are in the vicinity on any tours of Ireland take a look. The castle is actually 82 miles West of Dublin. The castle was rebuilt around a ruined medieval keep in...
This county is dominated by the peat bogs which stretch from the Bog of Allen in the East to Boora Bog in the West. Though the bogs make the area economically important they are not particularly attractive. Only in the South, where the land rises into the...
Ireland has the finest range of peatlands in Europe. They were formed following the last ice age, ten thousand years ago. The retreating ice sheet left the centre of Ireland covered by shallow lakes. Over the tens of centuries lakeside vegetation grew, died, and partly decomposed. The cycle changed...
The earliest known human settlement of Ireland occurred in the Mesolithic 8000BC, when tribes from Europe crossed to Ireland by boat from Scotland, or possibly across a land-bridge from Britain or the Isle of Man, to the east coast of Ireland. Hunter-gatherer habitation sites and...
Sir Lawrence Parsons, whose family was later ennobled as the Earls of Rosse, built this massive castle in the 1620s on the site of the Offaly stronghold of the O’Carrolls, the local clan described as ‘a hospitable, fierce, yellow-haired race’. The Earls of Rosse live...
This spacious Georgian town, with a long, straggling main street lined with neat houses and shops, marks the Westward limits of the Pale, the region centred on Dublin that was under direct English rule, and which gave us the expression ‘beyond the pale’. Still to...
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...
This is one of Ireland’s most important monastic and historical sites. Founded in AD 548 by St. Ciaran , it was once a great city and medieval University. The remains include a cathedral , seven church buildings , two round towers , three high crosses...
This former garrison town still retains some lovely Georgian houses. The rivers Camcor and Little Brosna join here , and there is good trout fishing. Birr Castle was originally an O'Carroll fortress and withstood many sieges. Sir Laurence Parsons rebuilt the castle around a ruined keep...
This spacious Georgian town , with a long , straggling main street lined with neat houses and shops , marks the Westward limits of the Pale , the region centred on Dublin that was under direct English rule , and which gave us the expression...