Buncrana

The largest town in Inishowen, on the eastern shore of Lough Swilly, and historic home of the O'Doherty clan. It grew up around O'Doherty's Keep until George Vaughan moved the town and laid out the present Main Street in 1718. Wolfe Tone was held in Buncrana Castle after his capture in 1798, and in 1905 it was the first town in Donegal to get electricity, generated at Swan Mill.

O'Doherty's Keep, on the north bank of the Crana, is the only surviving part of a 14th-century Norman castle; its first two levels were built after 1333 and Hugh Boy O'Doherty added a third in 1602 as a base for hoped-for Spanish help. Crown forces burned it in 1608 after Sir Cahir O'Doherty's rebellion, and it passed to Sir Arthur Chichester, who leased it to Henry Vaughan. In 1718 George Vaughan built Buncrana Castle, partly from the stone of the keep's bawn, moved the town south of the river and built the six-arched Castle Bridge. By the 1780s the town held regular markets, and on 18 May 1812 Isaac Todd bought the whole town at the Court of Chancery.

In 1833 and 1834 there was communal violence and unrest against landlord agents, and troops were stationed in Buncrana, Clonmany and Carndonagh. In the later 19th century the Lough Swilly railway brought tourists, mostly from Derry. On 30 July 1922 Free State forces took the town from Republicans without loss of life. The town was a textile centre from the 19th century until the mid-2000s, and it was twinned with Campbellsville, Kentucky, because both had a large Fruit of the Loom plant.

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

• Grianán of Aileach · fort · 13 km
• Inch Castle · castle · 10 km
• Burt Castle · castle · 13 km

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

• Grianán of Aileach · The stone ring-fort of the Northern Uí Néill, 250 metres up above Lough Swilly, with terraces inside its walls for the assembled warriors of Ailech.
• Doon Well · A well beneath the Rock of Doon, where the O'Donnells were inaugurated — pilgrims still tie rags to the bushes and leave crutches they no longer need.
• Doagh Famine Village · A village of thatched cottages lived in until 1983, telling the Inishowen story from eviction to Republican safe-houses — eccentric, and unforgettable.
• Rathmullan · The pier from which the Earls sailed in September 1607 (Hugh O'Neill, Rory O'Donnell and ninety followers) never to return. Ulster's history pivots here.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.