Castlerea

A west Roscommon town on the River Suck and the River Francis. Clonalis House on its western edge is the ancestral home of the O'Conors, a line that produced eleven high kings of Ireland. Douglas Hyde, the first President, and Sir William Wilde, Oscar's father, were both born here, and the RIC sergeant shot in the town on 11 July 1921 was the last casualty of the War of Independence, killed on the day of the Truce.

Clonalis House in the west of the town is the ancestral seat of the O'Conors, who gave Ireland eleven high kings and Connacht twenty-four kings. Under the Act for the Settlement of Ireland of 1652, Theophilus Sandford, one of Cromwell's soldiers, received a large share of confiscated O'Connor land including Castlerea. The town grew under the Sandfords, who set up a distillery producing more than 91,000 litres of whiskey a year at its height, along with a brewery and a tannery, and their descendants held power through the 19th century. The estate passed to the Land Commission and the Congested Districts Board, and its demesne is now a public park. On 11 July 1921 Sergeant James King of the RIC was shot on St Patrick Street and died soon after; the Truce came later that day.

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

• Cloonshanville High Cross · high cross · 4 km
• Emlagh High Cross · high cross · 4 km
• Rathcroghan · royal site · 14 km
• Glinsk Castle · castle · 14 km

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

• Rathcroghan (Cruachan) · Queen Medb's royal seat: 240 monuments over four square miles, including Oweynagat, the cave called 'the gate to Hell' — one claimed home of Halloween.
• Rathcroghan — Oweynagat · The 'cave of the cats', birthplace of Queen Medb and doorway to the Otherworld: at Samhain its creatures pour out into the world. One root of Halloween.
• Cruachan — Medb's court · Where Medb and Ailill's 'pillow talk' about whose wealth was greater started the Cattle Raid of Cooley — over one brown bull.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.