Castleisland

An east Kerry market town famous for the width of its main street, summed up by its own Con Houlihan as 'not so much a town as a street between two fields'. It was the centre of Desmond power in Kerry. Crag Cave, one of the most extensive cave systems in Ireland open to the public, is just outside the town, and in 1987 a young bald eagle was caught nearby, worn out after reputedly crossing the Atlantic.

The town takes its name from a castle built in 1226 by Geoffrey de Marisco, Lord Justice of Ireland under Henry III, who diverted the River Maine into a moat to make an island. Within about 120 years the Fitzgeralds held it, and in 1345 it was being kept for Maurice FitzGerald, 2nd Earl of Desmond, when Sir Raoul d'Ufford captured it and executed Sir Eustace de la Poer and the other knights. Little of the castle survives beyond the de Marisco tower at the west end of town. During the War of Independence two RIC men were shot leaving the parish church on 8 May 1921, one fatally, and on 10 July 1921 three IRA men and four British soldiers died in a gunfight in the town. The Carnegie library, completed by 1915, was burnt in 1920 and rebuilt in 1929.

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

• Tullygarran ogham stones · ogham stone · 13 km

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

• Dunloe Ogham Stones · Eight ogham stones in a circle by the road to the Gap — Ireland's earliest writing, notches on the edge of the stone naming forgotten chiefs.
• Rattoo round tower · A perfect 11th-century round tower — with a sheela-na-gig carved inside a window: a bold female figure on a holy building, 900 years old and still shocking.
• Ross Island copper mines · Among the earliest copper mines in north-west Europe, worked from 2400 BC by Beaker-culture miners with fire and stone hammers — beside Killarney's tourist lake.
• Slieve Mish — the Milesian landing · The sons of Míl, ancestors of the Gaels, came ashore in Kerry and fought the Tuatha Dé Danann at Slieve Mish. Defeated, the Tuatha Dé retreated underground into the sídhe.
• Lough Leane — O'Donoghue's return · Every May Day at dawn the chieftain O'Donoghue rides across the lake on a white horse; to see him brings a year's good luck.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.