Athboy

A small agricultural town in Meath on the Yellow Ford River near the Westmeath border. Close by is the Hill of Ward, or Tlachtga, where the pagan feast of Samhain, forerunner of Halloween, was held, and the town now celebrates the link with a Samhain festival. In medieval times it was a walled stronghold of the Pale, and in 1909 its people banded together to buy their own homes when the Earl of Darnley auctioned the town.

In the Middle Ages Athboy was a walled town of the Pale; the tower of St James's Church is a remnant of a 14th-century Carmelite priory, with stretches of the town wall behind it. Eoin Roe O'Neill took the town in 1643, and six years later Cromwell camped his army on the Hill of Ward. Athboy returned members to the Irish House of Commons from 1613 to 1800. In 1694 its lands were made a manor and granted to Thomas Bligh, whose son became Earl of Darnley in 1725, and the Blighs held nearly all the parish through the 18th and 19th centuries. In June 1909 the 8th Earl put the town up for auction, and the townspeople, through a branch of the Town Tenants League, bought their homes and businesses by private treaty. The railway, opened in 1864, closed for good in 1954.

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

• Kells Round Tower · high cross · 12 km
• Kells · round tower · 12 km
• Castlekeeran · high cross · 14 km
• Killua Castle · castle · 7 km
• Ballinlough Castle · castle · 8 km
• Durhamstown Castle · castle · 10 km
• Trim Castle · castle · 11 km
• Martinstown Castle · castle · 12 km
• Clonyn Castle · castle · 12 km

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

• Loughcrew cairns · Thirty tombs on the 'Hill of the Witch'; Cairn T's back-stone lights up at the equinox sunrise, and the 'Hag's Chair' outside grants a wish if you sit in it.
• 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.
• 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.
• Loughcrew — the Hag's Chair · The Cailleach leapt from hill to hill dropping stones from her apron to make the cairns, missed her footing on the last leap and died — her chair is still there.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.