Holywood

A town on the shore of Belfast Lough that grew as a sea-bathing resort for Belfast merchants in the early 1800s. Folklore has it that its maypole dates from 1700, when a Dutch crew ran aground and put up their broken mast in thanks; it was the only surviving original maypole in Ireland until a storm in 2021. Rory McIlroy learned his golf at Holywood Golf Club.

St Laiseran, son of Nasca, founded a monastery here before 640 on the site of the present priory, and the Normans called the woods around it Sanctus Boscus; the form Haliwode appears in a 14th-century document. The oldest priory ruins date from the early 13th century and the tower from 1800. In the early 19th century the town became popular for sea-bathing, and wealthy Belfast merchants built houses around it, among them the Kennedys of Cultra. The railway from Belfast opened in 1848 and brought rapid growth, from about 3,500 people in 1900 to 12,000 by 2001, and a bypass was finished in 1972. Cultra Manor, built 1902–04, now houses the Ulster Folk Museum.

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

• Giant's Ring · dolmen · 13 km
• Belfast Castle · castle · 7 km
• Carrickfergus Castle · castle · 9 km
• Bangor Castle · castle · 12 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.