Dungannon

The seat of the O'Neills, earls of Tyrone, and so the capital of Gaelic Ulster until the Flight of the Earls in 1607 emptied it. Hugh O'Neill burned his own castle here rather than leave it standing for the Crown.

Dungannon's fortunes were tied to the O'Neills, whose kings were inaugurated at Tullyhogue Fort four miles away, with the O'Hagans as its keepers. In the 14th century the O'Neills built a castle on Castle Hill, from which seven of the nine counties of Ulster can be seen on a clear day; Hugh O'Neill burned it himself in 1602 as Mountjoy closed in. After the Flight of the Earls the town was granted to Sir Arthur Chichester, and the Royal School was founded here in 1636. Sir Phelim O'Neill seized Dungannon at the start of the 1641 rebellion and issued the Proclamation of Dungannon, claiming the King's authority with what turned out to be a forged commission; James II stayed here in 1689 on his way to Derry.

In 1782, as the most central town of Ulster, Dungannon hosted the Volunteer convention: delegates of 147 corps met in the Presbyterian church on Scotch Street and declared that Westminster's claim to legislate for Ireland was unconstitutional and illegal. Further conventions met here in 1783 and 1793.

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

• Roxborough Castle · castle · 8 km
• Charlemont Fort · castle · 8 km
• Benburb Castle · castle · 10 km
• Mountjoy Castle · castle · 13 km

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

• Beaghmore stone circles · Seven stone circles, a dozen cairns and rows of tiny 'dragon's teeth' stones, hidden under bog for 3,500 years until turf-cutters found them in the 1940s.
• Navan Fort (Emain Macha) · Capital of the Ulaid and stage of the Ulster sagas — where a huge timber temple was built, filled with stones and deliberately burned around 95 BC.
• The Yellow Ford · August 1598: Hugh O'Neill destroys an English army marching to relieve the Blackwater fort — the worst defeat England ever suffered in Ireland.
• Benburb · June 1646: Owen Roe O'Neill's Spanish-trained army annihilates Monro's Scots on the Blackwater — the greatest Irish victory of the Confederate wars.
• Emain Macha — the Red Branch · Court of King Conchobar and the Red Branch knights. From here the boy Sétanta followed the king to the smith Culann's feast, killed Culann's hound and became Cú Chulainn, 'the Hound of Culann'.
• Emain Macha — Macha's curse · Forced to race the king's horses while pregnant, Macha cursed the men of Ulster to suffer birth-pangs in their hour of greatest need — which is why one boy fought the Táin alone. The site bears her name.
• Emain Macha — Deirdre of the Sorrows · Deirdre, promised to King Conchobar, fled with Naoise; when Naoise was killed on their return to Emain, Conchobar kept her, then gave her to his killer, Éogan. She threw herself from the chariot against a rock. Later tellings have her die of grief, and in some, yew trees grew from the two graves and twined together.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.