Gort

A planned Georgian market town between the Burren and the Slieve Aughty, built around a big triangular market, on a river that keeps disappearing underground. Lady Gregory's Coole House nearby was a base for the Irish Literary Revival, and Yeats made the tower at Thoor Ballylee his summer home. In the 2000s so many Brazilians came to work in the meat plants that in 2006 they made up around 30% of the town.

The town's name recalls Guaire Aidne mac Colmáin, seventh-century king of Connacht, who reputedly kept royal residences on a small island in the Gort river and gave St Colman MacDuagh the land for Kilmacduagh. In the Middle Ages the O'Shaughnessys had their main stronghold here, a castle on the island site that later became a cavalry barracks; Cromwellian forces besieged it in 1652 and it was burned and destroyed. At the end of the 17th century the O'Shaughnessy lands went to Sir Thomas Prendergast, whose grandson became Viscount Gort, and the centre was laid out to Lord Gort's plans. A four-storey flour mill built in 1806 worked until 1966. The Famine cut the population from 3,056 in 1841 to 2,097 in 1861, and the fever hospital and workhouse date from then.

From the late 1800s Coole House was a gathering place for the Literary Revival, and the 'Autograph Tree' still carries initials carved by Shaw, Yeats, O'Casey, Synge and others. W. B. Yeats bought Thoor Ballylee from the Gregorys and restored it as a summer home in the 1920s. During the War of Independence the barracks town had a heavy RIC and Black and Tan presence: Eileen Quinn was shot dead holding her infant outside the town on 1 November 1920, and later that month the Loughnane brothers were interrogated at the Gort barracks before being killed. From the early 2000s Brazilian immigrants arrived in large numbers, and in 2006 the town held Brazilian Carnival celebrations.

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

• Kilmacduagh · round tower · 5 km
• Ardrahan · round tower · 10 km
• Kiltartan Castle · castle · 3 km
• Lough Cutra Castle · castle · 5 km
• Thoor Ballylee · castle · 5 km
• Ardamullivan Castle · castle · 7 km
• Fiddaun Castle · castle · 7 km
• Drumharsna Castle · castle · 9 km

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

• Poulnabrone dolmen · Burren portal tomb holding the remains of 33 people who died a thousand years before the pyramids — one with a flint arrowhead in his hip.
• Killinaboy church · A ruined church with a sheela-na-gig above the door and a double-armed cross on its gable, the 'Cross of Lorraine', hinting at pilgrims and relics from the Continent.
• Dysert O'Dea · May 1318: the O'Briens destroy the Norman de Clares. Thomond stays Gaelic for 300 years. A round tower and high cross mark the ground.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.