Baltinglass

A west Wicklow town on the Slaney, under hills thick with prehistory: research in 2025 identified more than 600 suspected Neolithic and Early Bronze Age hilltop dwellings in the Brusselstown Ring nearby, by far the largest such settlement found in Ireland or Britain. In 1950 a row over who should run the post office, the 'Battle of Baltinglass', made national news, with telephone lines cut in protest until Helen Cooke got her job back.

The hills around the town are full of ancient sites, including a Stone Age passage grave on Baltinglass Hill said to be visible on bright days from the Curragh 48 km away. In 2025 researchers identified over 600 suspected hilltop dwellings from the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age at the Brusselstown Ring, which challenged the idea that the Vikings built the first Irish towns. The monastic church by the Slaney is said to date from around 700 AD, and Diarmait Mac Murchada founded the Cistercian abbey in 1148; it was suppressed in 1536. The Hiberno-Norman Eustaces were Viscounts Baltinglass, and their estates passed to Sir Maurice Eustace, Lord Chancellor 1660–1665, who built a church, school and bridge and brought in settlers.

The courthouse was built around 1810 and damaged in 1920, and the McAllister monument of 1904 honours Sam McAllister, who drew British fire at Derrynamuck on 15 February 1799 so Michael Dwyer could escape. In 1950 the Labour TD James Everett had local postal worker Helen Cooke replaced as sub-postmaster by his supporter Michael Farrell. The cry of cronyism became the 'Battle of Baltinglass': poles and phone lines were cut and the Farrells' shop boycotted, until Farrell resigned in December 1950 and Cooke was appointed, serving until 1962.

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

• Rathcoran · tomb · 2 km
• Crossoona Rath · ogham stone · 7 km
• Moone High Cross · high cross · 9 km
• Castledermot · round tower · 9 km
• Kilkea Castle · castle · 12 km
• Ballyloughan Castle · castle · 12 km

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

• Browneshill dolmen · A capstone of some 100 tonnes, the heaviest in Europe, raised by farmers without wheels or metal. Nobody is sure how.
• Piper’s Stones, Athgreany · Sixteen granite boulders of a Bronze Age circle, with one stone standing apart to the north-east. Dance here on a Sunday, they said, and you join them: the outlier is the piper, the ring is his congregation, caught mid-reel.
• Dún Ailinne · The royal site of Leinster: a 13-hectare hilltop enclosure whose vast timber circles were built for ceremonies, then dismantled and burned.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.