Keady

A market town in the drumlins south of Armagh, close enough to the border to have lived by it. Like Lurgan it was a linen town, with mills along the Clea river, and the hill the name describes is the one the town is built on.

Keady lay in the Fews, where the O'Neills of Tyrone came in through Middletown and Madden; the townland of Rathcarbery is the fort of Cairbre, said to be one of two O'Neill sons who settled here, and the main street, Kinelowen, means the seed of Eoghan. Hughes, the commonest local surname, comes from Aodh. By 1804 the town had Church Street, Main Street and Madden Row, and a lane up to the Presbyterian church of 1776.

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

• Mullyash Kerbed Cairn · tomb · 9 km
• Navan Fort · royal site · 11 km
• Creevekeeran Castle · castle · 7 km
• Gosford Castle · castle · 14 km
• Hope Castle · castle · 14 km

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

• 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.
• Slieve Gullion — the Cailleach's lake · Fionn swam in the summit lake for a maiden's lost ring and emerged an old man — the Cailleach's trick. Even now, they say, swimmers' hair turns grey.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.