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County Leitrim · Connacht

Drumshanbo

Droim Seanbhó

'ridge of the old cow'

🏔 County Leitrim Source: Wikipedia ↗
The story

At the foot of Lough Allen between the Iron Mountain and the Arigna hills, which is exactly where the coal and the iron were. It is a town that lived on mining and now lives on the river and the music.

County Leitrim through the ages →
The history of Drumshanbo

Drumshanbo grew out of the iron industry around Slieve Anierin in the 17th century: pig iron smelted on the east of the mountain was brought across Lough Allen to the finery forge here and shipped on to Dublin and Limerick. The forests of Leitrim were cut down for the charcoal, and a 19th-century survey recalled that a hundred years before one could have travelled from Drumshanbo to Drumkeeran "from tree to tree by branches". About 500 victims of the Famine are buried at a famine-era burial ground in the town.

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

Castles and monuments within 15 km

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

Worth seeing nearby
  • Carrowkeel passage tombs · Fourteen Neolithic tombs on the Bricklieve ridges, one aligned so the midsummer sunset shines down its passage — the mirror of Newgrange, with no crowds.
  • Magh Slécht · ‘The plain of prostrations’, where the idol Crom Cruach stood ringed by twelve others. Patrick is said to have felled it with his crozier from the next hill, and the twelve to have been swallowed by the earth. A decorated La Tène stone found at Killycluggin is the candidate for the idol itself.
  • Moytura · Second Battle of Mag Tuired: the Tuatha Dé Danann against the Fomorians. Lugh of the Long Arm kills his grandfather Balor of the Evil Eye with a sling-stone through the eye.
  • Shannon Pot — Sionann’s well · Sionann, of the line of the sea god Lir, came to the well of knowledge for its forbidden fruit. The water rose and took her, and went on rising — it is the Shannon, and it still carries her name.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.

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