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County Dublin · Leinster

Howth

Binn Éadair

the Irish name is 'Éadar's peak'; the English name is Old Norse hǫfuð, 'head'

🏔 County Dublin Source: Wikipedia ↗
The story

Two peoples named the same rock for different things: the Irish for a man, the Norse for its shape. It has been lived on since prehistoric times, it holds a portal tomb, Aideen's Grave, in the grounds of Howth Castle, and the guns for the Irish Volunteers were landed at its pier from the Asgard in 1914.

County Dublin through the ages →
The history of Howth

Aideen's Grave, a dolmen in the grounds of Howth Castle, is about 3,000 years old, and Ptolemy's map shows Howth as an island called Edri Deserta. After Clontarf in 1014 many Norse fell back to Howth. In 1177 Almeric Tristram and John de Courcy defeated its defenders, and Tristram took the lordship; his descendants, who took the name St Lawrence, held Howth until 2019. Tradition says that in 1576 Grace O'Malley, turned away from Howth Castle, took the earl's heir hostage until he promised the gates would never again be shut to unexpected guests.

A packet harbour for the mail boats was begun at Howth in 1807, but it silted up and the service moved to Dún Laoghaire. George IV landed here in August 1821, and his footprints are carved on the West Pier. W. B. Yeats lived at Balscadden House from 1880 to 1883.

Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Howth ↗, 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
  • Clontarf · Good Friday 1014: Brian Boru's forces break Leinster and Dublin's Vikings — and Brian is killed praying in his tent. Now a quiet seafront suburb.
  • Drumanagh promontory fort · A headland fort that has yielded Roman coins, brooches and pottery — the strongest evidence of a Roman trading post (or a Romanised Irish king) in Ireland.
  • Gleann na Smól — Oisín returns · After 300 years in Tír na nÓg, Oisín came home, touched the ground helping men lift a stone, and aged in an instant — to tell Patrick the tales of the Fianna.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.

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