Clane

A Liffey town in north Kildare that probably grew from an abbey founded around 520 by Ailbe of Emly. The parish is where the 1798 rebellion broke out, with a battle on Coiseanna Hill that the rebels quickly lost. James Joyce, who went to school at nearby Clongowes Wood, used Clane as one of the settings for Stephen's early life in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.

The town most likely owes its origin to an abbey founded around 520 by Ailbe of Emly, with St Senchel the Elder as first abbot. St Ultan Tua, who used to put a stone in his mouth to stop himself speaking during Lent, and his brother Fotharnaise are said to be buried here, and King Mesgegra's Mound claims links to a legendary 1st-century king of Leinster. In 1272 Sir Gerald FitzMaurice, 3rd Lord Ophaly, founded a Franciscan friary whose ruins still stand; in 1542 Henry VIII's commissioner granted it, with about 70 acres, a church and outbuildings, for £177. In 1798 the United Irishmen fought yeomen under Richard Griffith on Coiseanna Hill and were easily beaten, the survivors fleeing to Timahoe.

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

• Oughter Ard · round tower · 8 km
• Taghadoe · round tower · 8 km
• Killashee · round tower · 11 km
• Rathcoffey Castle · castle · 5 km
• Saint David's Castle · castle · 8 km
• Reeves Castle · castle · 8 km
• Jigginstown Castle · castle · 9 km
• Maynooth Castle · castle · 12 km

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

• 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.
• Hill of Allen — Fionn's fort · Almu, the white fortress of Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fianna. A 19th-century folly now crowns the hill; the quarry has eaten half of it.
• Gleann na Smól — Oisín returns · After 300 years in Tír na nÓg, Oisín came home, touched the ground helping men lift a stone, and aged in an instant — to tell Patrick the tales of the Fianna.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.