The impressive fortifications that crown Dunree Head are a reminder of the strategic importance of Lough Swilly. In 1800, when Ireland was faced with the Napoleonic threat, heavy guns where mounted on the bluff of rock that commands the entrance to the lough. Martello towers...
This was the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Dal Riada, and is thought to have been one of the three great ‘duns’, or royal forts, visited by St Patrick in the 5th century. It lay at the end of an ancient route from Dundalk...
Westport was laid out as an adjunct to the Marquess of Sligo’s Westport House in the late 18th century, and its legacy of town planning can be seen in the comfortably spacious streets. The town focuses on the canalised River Carrowbeg, which tumbles gently over...
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...
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...