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Cashel, County Tipperary
Photograph: Berthold Werner · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
County Tipperary · Munster

Cashel

Caiseal

'stone fort'

🏔 County Tipperary Source: Wikipedia ↗
The story

The Rock of Cashel was the seat of the kings of Munster for six hundred years, until Muirchertach Ua Briain handed it to the Church in 1101 — a gesture of piety that also denied it to his rivals. Cormac's Chapel on the rock is the finest Romanesque building in Ireland.

County Tipperary through the ages →
The history of Cashel

The Rock of Cashel rises out of the Golden Vale, and the town grew beneath it. In the 5th century the Eóganachta made the Rock their royal seat, the capital of Munster; the Book of Rights explains the name as Cais-il, the tribute stone. Tradition says Patrick baptised King Aengus here, driving his crozier through the king's foot by mistake. In 977 Brian Boru was crowned king of Cashel, the first outside the Eóganachta in five hundred years, and in 1101 his great-grandson Muirchertach Ua Briain gave the Rock to the Church, putting it forever out of reach of the MacCarthys.

Henry II called the Synod of Cashel in 1172. On 30 December 1640 an Irish force under Pilib Ó Dubhuir took the town and 300 prisoners. In 1647 Parliamentarian troops under Lord Inchiquin stormed and sacked Cashel, killing more than 1,000 soldiers and civilians, including several clergy.

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

Castles and monuments within 15 km

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

Worth seeing nearby
  • Fethard town walls · Ireland's most complete medieval town walls — and set into them, a sheela-na-gig facing the road, a fertility figure guarding a Norman town.
  • Soloheadbeg · 21 January 1919: two policemen escorting gelignite are shot dead — the same day the First Dáil meets. The War of Independence begins in a country lane.
  • Hayes's Hotel, Thurles · In a billiard room here on 1 November 1884, seven men founded the GAA. Today it has 2,200 clubs on five continents.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.

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