Navan Fort
Emain Macha, the ceremonial monument outside Armagh that tradition makes one of the great royal sites of pre-Christian Gaelic Ireland and the capital of the Ulaid. It is the court of Conchobar and the Red Branch in the Ulster Cycle.
Tara, Emain Macha, Cruachan and Dún Ailinne: four hills where kingship was performed rather than defended, and the hillforts that are the other half of the story.
The royal sites are not forts, whatever their banks suggest. The ditch at Tara and at Emain Macha lies inside the bank, which is the wrong way round for defence and the right way round for an enclosure meant to keep something in, or to mark a boundary that is not military. What happened on them was inauguration, assembly and ceremony.
Each belonged to a province and to a dynasty. Tara in Meath is the seat the high kingship is attached to. Emain Macha, now Navan Fort outside Armagh, is the capital of the Ulaid and the court of Conchobar in the Ulster Cycle. Cruachan, now Rathcroghan in Roscommon, is Medb's, and the cave beside it was reckoned a door into the Otherworld. Dún Ailinne on Knockaulin is Leinster's.
The hillforts are older and more puzzling. Rathgall in Wicklow, Mooghaun in Clare, the largest in the country, and Freestone Hill in Kilkenny were built from the Bronze Age on, and the usual reading of them as strongholds does not sit well with the evidence: there is little sign that any of them was ever attacked. Recent scholarship reads many of them as monuments rather than defences.
What all of them share is that the stories came later than the earthworks, and outlasted them. The mound at Tara was a passage tomb before anyone was made king on the hill.
Sources: Wikipedia — Hill of Tara ↗ · Wikipedia — Navan Fort ↗ · Wikipedia — Rathcroghan ↗ · Wikipedia — D%C3%BAn Ailinne ↗ · Wikipedia — List of hillforts in Ireland ↗
Emain Macha, the ceremonial monument outside Armagh that tradition makes one of the great royal sites of pre-Christian Gaelic Ireland and the capital of the Ulaid. It is the court of Conchobar and the Red Branch in the Ulster Cycle.
Múchán, a late Bronze Age hillfort covering an entire hill in County Clare, and believed to be the largest hillfort in Ireland.
An ancient ceremonial site on the hill of Knockaulin near Kilcullen: a large circular enclosure, and the royal site of Leinster to set beside Tara, Emain Macha and Cruachan.
A prehistoric burial cairn and Iron Age hillfort in County Kilkenny, with a lone thorn tree standing at the top of it.
Teamhair, the hill near Skryne that tradition makes the inauguration place and seat of the High Kings of Ireland. It is a ceremonial and burial site far older than the kingship attached to it, and it appears throughout Irish mythology.
Ráth Cruachan, a complex of archaeological sites near Tulsk identified as Cruachan, the capital of the Connachta. It is Medb's seat in the Táin, and the cave of Oweynagat here was called a doorway to the Otherworld.
An Ráth Gheal, the Ring of the Rath: a large multivallate hillfort of the Bronze Age, three roughly concentric stone ramparts with a medieval masonry wall at the centre.
Descriptions are Wikipedia's own opening lines, used under CC BY-SA 4.0 with a link to each article; the list and the coordinates come from the same place. Nothing here is a guide to access — many of these stand on private land.
Tara in Meath, Emain Macha (Navan Fort) in Armagh, Cruachan (Rathcroghan) in Roscommon and Dún Ailinne in Kildare: the four ceremonial capitals of the provinces, where kings were inaugurated and assemblies held.
No. Tara is a ceremonial and burial site, and its best-known enclosure has its ditch inside the bank, which makes no sense as a defence. Tradition makes it the inauguration place of the High Kings, and the hill carries a passage tomb far older than the kingship.
Mooghaun in County Clare, a late Bronze Age hillfort that covers an entire hill and is believed to be the largest in the country.
A ringfort is a farmstead, one family behind a bank or a wall, and there are tens of thousands. A hillfort encloses a hilltop, is far larger and far rarer, and was built much earlier. This page maps 7 royal sites and hillforts; the ringforts have a page of their own.
Know one that is missing? Thousands of royal sites & hillforts have no article and no pin — a townland name and a rough location is enough to start.
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