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The Rock of Cashel, a medieval stronghold that after served because the seat of Eire’s kings, is undeniably magnificent. Perched excessive on an outcrop overlooking lush Tipperary farmland, its spherical towers, excessive crosses and Thirteenth-century Gothic cathedral appeal to a gradual stream of tourists. However it’s not the one Irish citadel or abbey to attract giant crowds. Even off season, there are lengthy queues for internationally recognised websites resembling Bunratty, Clonmacnoise, Glendalough, Dunluce, Blarney and Kylemore. Unesco-designated world heritage website Skellig Michael (well-known as Luke Skywalker’s island sanctuary in Star Wars) has restricted entry, and different historic buildings have been made into five-star lodges.
However it is a nation the place a citadel or abbey can seem round virtually each windswept nook, so there are millions of off-the-radar locations to go to. These websites have equally spectacular structure, and presumably much more intriguing backstories, however a noticeable absence of tour buses and crowds as a result of they haven’t featured on the massive or small display – but. Usually, you’ll share the area with only a handful of Hibernophiles. With that in thoughts, we’ve chosen eight of the very best lesser-known abbeys and castles in Eire relationship from the seventh and to the Nineteenth centuries.
Saints and students
Grianán of Aileach, Inishowen, Co Donegal, circa 800
This 23-metre vast, five-metre-high hill fort was, for a interval, the stronghold of the Ó Néills, considered one of Eire’s strongest dynasties till the tip of the Gaelic order and Brehon Regulation in 1603. The round fortress is without doubt one of the most interesting examples of pre-Norman structure within the nation, with 4½-metre-thick dry-stone partitions. An entrance passage results in an enviornment with tiered stone steps alongside the perimeter that climb to a sequence of terraces. Even by as we speak’s requirements the constructing is spectacular. Its hilltop location 250 metres above sea stage means epic views over hills, valleys and each Lough Swilly and Lough Foyle – the place Viking fleets entered the Inishowen peninsula seeking hassle, solely to be stripped of their gold by native warriors. The location dates again to a lot earlier inhabitation greater than 3,000 years in the past. A holy nicely behind the fortress is called after Saint Patrick – within the fifth century he seemingly baptised Owen (Eoghan– an area prince who lent his identify to the Inishowen peninsula. Afterwards, head alongside Lough Swilly’s coast and linger on the Railway Tavern, a former station home, for sustenance.
Admission Free, discoverireland.ie
Fore Abbey, Co Westmeath, circa 630AD
The seven wonders of Fore relate to the development stage of Fore Abbey and unusual manifestations within the native panorama, from rivers flowing uphill to the boggy terrain that carried the muse. Today, it’s onerous to think about that this community of ruins in a distant valley was as soon as a thriving centre of schooling, house to 300 monks and 1000’s of scholars. Finest guess has it that this medieval monastic advanced was established by St Féichín in 630. He died, together with a superb portion of his flock, from yellow fever some years later, which brings us to a primary anomaly.
The seventh miracle occurred, apparently, when St Féichín raised a two-tonne stone doorway lintel into place by the facility of prayer within the 10th century – when he had been lifeless a while. Regardless of the time journey points, the lintel stays in place to at the present time. Different idiosyncratic options embody a hermit’s cell and a high-quality cloister arcade constructed later as a part of a Benedictine priory by landlord Hugh De Lacy, who additionally constructed Trim Fortress (a setting for the film Braveheart) about 20 miles away. A marked path round Fore covers a lot of the sights, and it’s a remarkably lovely setting. In Fore village is one thing else that hasn’t modified shortly – the Seven Wonders Pub.
Admission free, heritageireland.ie/
Chieftains and Normans, 1169-1601
The Rock of Dunamase, Co Laois, Thirteenth century
Rising from the contours of a excessive outcrop and visual for miles from the plains of Laois, Dunamase’s courtyard partitions provided a superb defence for an important and spectacular palace within the county. Right this moment it’s troublesome to see the place pure rock ends and the man-made construction begins as a result of the buildings, favored cracked tooth, have virtually set into the rocky pedestal and weathered over time. Even the barbican, or entrance, is etched right into a ditch, so the place has the air of one thing that emerged organically over the centuries. Kings of Laois sat right here from AD845, till a wave of Viking invasions annihilated that chapter of the rock’s historical past. It was solely when Isabel, daughter of Irish and Norman energy couple Aoife MacMurrough and Richard “Strongbow” de Clare, occupied the citadel within the early 13th century that the positioning returned to prominence. Irish Brehon Regulation, which was stamped out 400 years later beneath English rule, was progressive in issues of sexuality, divorce and feminine rights – so property may cross from mother or father to daughter. Dunamase handed by generations of daughters, similar to the citadel of Gráinne Mhaol (higher often called the pirate queen Grace O’Malley of Co Mayo) within the 16th century. Ultimately the Rock of Dunamase was deserted within the late 14th century and nearly destroyed by Cromwellian troops throughout a siege in 1650.
Admission free, discoverireland.ie/laois/rock-of-dunamase
Quin Abbey, Quin Village, Co Clare 1402
This abbey (formally a friary however all the time known as an abbey) is in fairly Quin Village, a distant hamlet misplaced in a maze of nation lanes. A 3-arch bridge and slender streets curve across the abbey break, church and a crumbling chapel, as if to maintain watch on the comings and goings alongside the meadow path to the abbey. The path intently follows the gushing Rine River by bumpy terrain, the place an historic city settlement has lain buried beneath the tufts of grass for hundreds of years. The abbey began life in 1278 as a large fortress, constructed by Thomas de Clare. He was an Anglo Norman peer who spectacularly did not subdue the native chieftains – a long time earlier than, his citadel was virtually fully razed by the O’Brien clan.
The citadel’s spherical battlements and durable partitions kind a part of the Fifteenth-century McNamara Franciscan Abbey, and ooze historical past. To the proper of the nave is a transept with the Nineteenth-century grave of Fireball McNamara, the final McNamara chieftain and hell-raising sidekick of politician and Catholic emancipation chief Daniel O’Connell. Etched on to the scorched south wall of the chancel is the form of a crucifix desecrated by Cromwellian forces. Simply by the neat, completely fashioned cloister are the vaults of the Butlers or Lord Dunboyne dynasty. They had been a strand of a strong household who lived in close by Knappogue Fortress – whereas in one other vault lie the infamous Blood clan from Ballykilty Manor, linked to the Tower of London crown jewel thief. The Abbey Tavern throughout from the friary is the place to lift a glass to the sophisticated previous.
Admission free, visiteastclare.ie
The darkest centuries, 1602 to 1916
Parke’s Fortress, Kilmore, Co Leitrim, 1635
Disneyesque Parke’s Castle, with its neat cobbled courtyard, was started in the aftermath of the bloodbath that was the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 – heralding centuries of English domination. One of the first casualties of that subjugation was Dónal Cam O’Sullivan, the last powerful king or chieftain of south-west Ireland. After the fall of his Dunboy Castle on Beara peninsula in 1602, English crown forces, under the command of Sir George Carew, tossed 300 of Donal’s most vulnerable kinsfolk into the swirling ocean from a rocky headland on nearby Dursey Island. By New Year’s Eve 1602, Dónal had gathered 1,000 survivors and was heading for refuge at Brian Óg O’Rourke’s castle in Leitrim, more than 200 miles north. Only 35 completed the trek due to harsh conditions. Soon Brian Óg was also on the run from crown forces for harbouring renegade Spanish and Irish Catholics loyal to the powerful chieftain Hugh O’Neill, in Tyrone.
The final death knell for the old Gaelic order came with the flight of the earls, in 1607. The days of O’Rourke’s chieftainship in Co Leitrim had truly ended as the gleaming white Parke’s Castle was constructed from the rubble of O’Rourke’s keep on the shores of Lough Gill. It almost embodied the changing of the old order with a new breed of leader and landlord in Ireland: the planters from Great Britain. The twist in the tale is that Kent native Robert Parke, who built the beautiful turreted pale edifice that’s almost stencilled against the dark lake waters late in the evening had a far better relationship with the local Irish community than he did with other planters.
Admission €5, leitrimtourism.com/heritage/parkes-castle
King John’s Castle, Limerick City, circa 1212
One of the world’s best-preserved Norman fortresses, King John’s Castle has thick walls and sturdy battlements that define Limerick City’s westerly river contour. It replaced an earlier Viking settlement, yet if there’s any building to symbolise the 17th-century end of the Williamite War in Ireland and the subsequent wholesale oppression of Irish Catholics, it’s this place. On 3 October 1691, Irish Jacobite leader Patrick Sarsfield conceded defeat of his army to Williamite forces from his base here. The surrender was relatively amicable compared with other bloodthirsty conquests and so Sarsfield reached and signed an agreement for withdrawal on a boulder by the castle – which was called the Treaty Stone. Sarsfield gathered his 10,000 troops in an evacuation known as the Flight of The Wild Geese – and they flew off from King John’s Castle to France, never to return. In exchange for exile, Sarsfield was promised protection of the Catholics that remained in Ireland. However, by 1695 they had lost their basic civil rights under penal laws. The Treaty Stone now stares accusingly at the castle from across the river and the walls of the fortress still bear the scars of cannonballs, while a statue of Sarsfield and another of the Wild Geese stand on the castle perimeters. A French academic based in Limerick has recently discovered Sarsfield’s remains in Belgium; they will be repatriated to Ireland. After your visit, remain in the moment by visiting Katy Daly’s or JJ Bowles, two pubs that vie for the title of the city’s oldest establishment, both close to the castle.
Admission €13, kingjohnscastle.ie
A new state is born
Thoor Ballylee, Gort, Co Galway circa 1450
Down the narrowest of country roads, just a short distance from Gort in south County Galway, is Thoor Ballylee. It’s a tower house burrowed into hedging by a fast-flowing river, with whitewashed thatched cottages by its side. It took a long time to find its way on to the history pages, but when poet, dramatist and larger-than-life figure of Ireland’s newly formed state William Butler Yeats bought it as his home in 1917, that all changed. It was immortalised as the limestone muse of one the world’s most famous literary figures. From then on it became known as Yeats’s Tower.
Many of Yeats’s life milestones happened here: he became a father, a politician, won the Nobel prize for literature and published poetry collection The Tower. The Winding Stair, which followed in 1933, is named after the moon-shaped stone steps that curve their way to the top of the keep. His friend (and the co-founder of Dublin’s Gaiety theatre) Augusta Gregory lived nearby at Coole Park, where he signed the Autograph Tree along with JM Synge, George Bernard Shaw and Sean O’Casey. Yeats also mounted a plaque on the castle walls for posterity with the words: “I, the poet William Yeats/With old mill boards and sea-green slates/And smithy work from the Gort forge/Restored this tower for my wife George;/And may these characters remain/When all is ruin once again.” While in the area, don’t miss Kilmacduagh, an impressive monastic ruin with the highest round tower in the world, which, some say, leans more acutely than Pisa’s. If you’re staying, drop by for mussels at Moran’s on the Weir.
Admission €7, yeatsthoorballylee.org
Glenstal Abbey, Murroe Village, County Limerick 1839
This hilltop castle is almost within earshot of the thunderous sound of the waterfalls that plunge through the Clare Glens, a red sandstone sylvan gorge that defines the Tipperary and Limerick border. Glenstal, with its eclectic mix of neo-Norman and Irish architecture, was a hare’s whisper from being Áras an Uachtaráin – Ireland’s version of the White House. WT Cosgrave, the first head of government of the fledgling Irish republic, seriously considered it as his seat of power, before settling on Dublin for logistical reasons. Ownership was passed shortly afterward to the Benedictine Order from Charles Barrington, a grieving local philanthropist whose daughter Winifred was accidentally and fatally shot during the Black and Tan war near Glenstal on 14 May 1921. Almost six years to the day later, an entourage arrived in the village of Murroe from Belgium to establish the new monastery. Today, behind the twin sandstone towers and turreted facade is an elite boarding school for boys, while the exquisite grounds feature a working farm. The garden, with its lakes and ancient trees, was planted to look its best in late spring and still blossoms with pink rhododendrons – the flowers that lay by young Winifred while she was laid out in the castle a century earlier. Guests, who include celebrities, can stay overnight (in the guesthouse or in two “God Pods” – self-catering units with a nightly suggested rate of €120) and are welcome to join the community for meals. Day visitors can take a tour (organised in advance for groups), which includes scones in the abbey and attending a mass to hear the monks’ and students’ acclaimed Gregorian chant.
glenstal.com
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