Ashbourne

Ashbourne was a planned town of the coaching age: around 1820 Frederick Bourne, who owned a coach company and financed roads, built a village with an inn by his toll booth ten Irish miles from Dublin and named it after his favourite tree and himself. On 28 April 1916 Thomas Ashe's Fingal Volunteers attacked the RIC barracks here and fought a long battle at Rath Cross. The town tripled in population between 1996 and 2022.

Excavations show settlement back to Neolithic times, a Bronze Age settlement at Rath and an early Christian site at Killegland, whose name, Declan's Church, the article links to pre-Patrician settlement; the place was known as Killegland or Kildeglan from at least the 13th century. After the Norman conquest the Wafre family held land here from 1220 to 1420 and built a tower house. The Segraves then held it until 1649, and Henry Cromwell stayed for a time in Killeglan Castle. Under the Carters the castle fell into ruin, and when their estates were sold in the 1840s the lands were bought by Frederick Bourne, who had begun his village by the toll road in 1820. Rail took business from the roads by 1850, and the last landlord left for Kent in 1899, when the land was sold to the tenants.

On 28 April 1916 about 45 Fingal Volunteers under Thomas Ashe, with Richard Mulcahy as second in command, attacked the RIC barracks, which held ten men that day. As the police were about to surrender, a convoy of RIC reinforcements arrived from Slane, and a firefight of several hours ended in the police surrendering. With the Rising put down in Dublin, the Volunteers gave themselves up two days later; Ashe and his men were sentenced to death, commuted to penal servitude for life. President Seán T. O'Kelly unveiled a memorial at Rath Cross on Easter Sunday, 26 April 1959.

Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Ashbourne ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

• Swords · round tower · 13 km
• Athcarne Castle · castle · 13 km
• Killeen Castle, Dunsany · castle · 13 km
• Skryne Castle · castle · 13 km

Straight-line distances from the town centre, from each site's documented coordinates.

• Hill of Tara · Seat of the High Kings, with the Lia Fáil that cried out under a rightful king — and, in 1899, holes dug by British Israelites hunting the Ark of the Covenant.
• Clontarf · Good Friday 1014: Brian Boru's forces break Leinster and Dublin's Vikings — and Brian is killed praying in his tent. Now a quiet seafront suburb.
• The Boyne · 1 July 1690 (12 July new style): William beats James at Oldbridge. Fewer died than at Aughrim a year later, but this is the battle everyone remembers.
• Drumanagh promontory fort · A headland fort that has yielded Roman coins, brooches and pottery — the strongest evidence of a Roman trading post (or a Romanised Irish king) in Ireland.
• Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange) · Home of the Dagda, chief of the Tuatha Dé Danann, won by Aengus, god of love, who asked to stay 'a day and a night', meaning all days and all nights. In the older telling Aengus plays the trick on his foster-father Elcmar; later versions make the victim the Dagda himself.
• Tara — the Lia Fáil · The Stone of Destiny, one of four treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann, which roared beneath the foot of every rightful king of Ireland.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.