Balbriggan

A seaside town in north Fingal that rose from a fishing village to a cotton and hosiery centre, so well known that long underwear came to be called 'Balbriggans', worn by Queen Victoria and the Czarina of Russia. After an RIC officer was killed in September 1920, Black and Tans from Gormanston Camp sacked the town, burning 54 houses and a hosiery factory and killing two men, and pictures of the ruins caused outrage around the world.

No one agrees when the town was founded, though there was probably always a small settlement of fishermen, weavers and traders. The annalist Ware records a battle here on Whitsun eve 1329 in which John de Bermingham, Earl of Louth, Richard, Lord of Malahide, and some of their kinsmen were killed with 60 English followers by the Verduns, Gernons and Savages, who opposed the earl's elevation. An 18th-century traveller described a small village in a glen with a safe little harbour, visited in summer by genteel people for the bathing. The judge and landowner George Hamilton built the pier, finished in 1763, and set up cotton factories in 1780.

In 1837 Lewis described a seaport of 3,016 people, mostly working in cotton, with two factories driven by steam and water, 942 hand-looms and a name for the finest cotton stockings. The 19th-century Smith's Stocking Mill made the long underwear known as Balbriggans, and in 1870 Charles Gallen & Company bought Hamilton's old weaving mill and became known for fine linen. On 20 September 1920 RIC Deputy Inspector Peter Burke was killed, and Black and Tans sacked the town in reprisal, destroying 54 houses and a hosiery factory and bayoneting two residents, Séamus Lawless and Sean Gibbons. Images of the burnt town went round the world, and an American delegation pledged to rebuild thirty homes and a factory.

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

• Lusk · round tower · 9 km
• Dardistown Castle · castle · 11 km

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

• 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.
• Monasterboice · Muiredach's Cross (the finest high cross in Ireland, a 10th-century Bible carved in stone) and a round tower still standing after a Viking burning in 1097.
• 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.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.