Donaghadee

A small harbour town on the Ards Peninsula, built on the site of a ringfort that the Normans made into a motte. From 1759 to 1826 couples sailed on the daily packet to Portpatrick to marry, earning that port the name 'Gretna Green for Ireland'. Grace Neill's, opened in 1611 as the King's Arms, claims to be the oldest bar in Ireland, a claim others also make.

The site was first a Gaelic ringfort, and the Anglo-Normans built a motte-and-bailey castle on it after taking the area in the late 12th century. In the early 17th century Hugh Montgomery settled Scottish Protestants here, and it began to grow into a town; the old town hall, a merchant's house, dates from around 1770. On 10 June 1798 United Irishmen from Donaghadee and nearby places marched on Newtownards and were driven off by musket fire from the market house. Between 1759 and 1826 couples took the daily packet boat to Portpatrick in Scotland to marry. The population was 3,151 in 1841. The harbour, planned by John Rennie and finished by his son in 1825, was followed by a limestone lighthouse in the late 1830s, and the railway served the town from 1861 to 1950.

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

• Bangor Castle · castle · 10 km

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

• Nendrum Monastery · Three concentric drystone enclosures, a round tower stump, and a sundial from around 900. Beside them, dug out of the shore, the oldest excavated tide mill anywhere in the world — tree-ring dated to 619, rebuilt in 787.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.