Drogheda

A walled Norman port at the lowest bridging point of the Boyne, and for a time a rival to Dublin — parliaments met here, and Poynings' Law was passed here in 1494. In September 1649 Cromwell stormed the town and put the garrison to the sword; the memory of it has never left Irish nationalism. St Peter's Church holds the head of St Oliver Plunkett.

Drogheda sits in a landscape settled for thousands of years — Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth are close by — but the historian John Bradley found no evidence of a town here before the Normans, and excavations have backed him. Hugh de Lacy probably raised the motte at Millmount before 1186, and Walter de Lacy gave Drogheda-in-Meath its first known charter in 1194. The wall along Rosemary Lane, finished in 1234, is the oldest stone structure in the town.

Drogheda was an important walled town of the Pale, where the Irish parliament often met. The Earl of Desmond and two of his young sons were executed here in 1468, and in 1494 parliament moved here and passed Poynings' Law, which put the Irish parliament under the King and his English council. In September 1649 Cromwell stormed the town and massacred the Royalist garrison; in his own words the officers were "knocked on the head" and every tenth soldier killed. The Battle of the Boyne was fought about 6 km west at Oldbridge in 1690.

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

• Townleyhall passage grave · tomb · 7 km
• Brú na Bóinne · tomb · 7 km
• Muiredach's High Cross · high cross · 8 km
• Monasterboice · high cross · 8 km
• Monasterboice · round tower · 8 km
• Newgrange cursus · tomb · 9 km
• Dardistown Castle · castle · 6 km
• Athclare Castle · castle · 11 km
• Barmeath Castle · castle · 12 km
• Athcarne Castle · castle · 12 km
• Slane Castle · castle · 14 km

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

• Hill of Tara · Seat of the High Kings, with the Lia Fáil that cried out under a rightful king — and, in 1899, holes dug by British Israelites hunting the Ark of the Covenant.
• The Boyne · 1 July 1690 (12 July new style): William beats James at Oldbridge. Fewer died than at Aughrim a year later, but this is the battle everyone remembers.
• Monasterboice · Muiredach's Cross (the finest high cross in Ireland, a 10th-century Bible carved in stone) and a round tower still standing after a Viking burning in 1097.
• Brú na Bóinne (Newgrange) · Home of the Dagda, chief of the Tuatha Dé Danann, won by Aengus, god of love, who asked to stay 'a day and a night', meaning all days and all nights. In the older telling Aengus plays the trick on his foster-father Elcmar; later versions make the victim the Dagda himself.
• Tara — the Lia Fáil · The Stone of Destiny, one of four treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann, which roared beneath the foot of every rightful king of Ireland.
• Ardee — the ford of Ferdia · Áth Fhirdia: where Cú Chulainn fought his foster-brother Ferdia for three days, killed him with the gae bolga, and wept over his body. The town is named for the dead man.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.