Kilcullen

A Kildare town on the Liffey, formally Kilcullen Bridge, which grew up after a canon of Kildare Cathedral built a bridge here in 1319 and slowly took over from Old Kilcullen on the hill to the south. Nearby is Dún Ailinne, linked with the kings of Leinster, and Ireland's first toll road of 1729 ran to the bridge. The 1903 Gordon Bennett race passed through, the event credited with giving British racing green its colour.

Old Kilcullen began as a monastery in the mid-5th century and became an Anglo-Norman walled town with seven gates; Vikings raided it in 936 and 944, and a damaged round tower remains. The bridge built in 1319 by Maurice Jakis drew settlement to the present site, at first only on the east bank. The Eustaces held much influence from Castlemartin, and Rowland FitzEustace, Lord Portlester, began New Abbey in 1486 and is buried there. The town was close to the Battle of Kilcullen in 1798, when Castlemartin was the British Army's base in Kildare.

In 1837 the town had 699 people, one main street of 112 buildings, a Saturday market and several fairs a year, while Old Kilcullen's rural population was still several times larger. The six-arch bridge was rebuilt about 1850. Harristown House, built in 1740 for the La Touche family, burned in 1891 and was rebuilt smaller. On 2 July 1903 the Gordon Bennett Cup ran through the town, won by Camille Jenatzy in a Mercedes.

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

• Dún Ailinne · royal site · 3 km
• Old Kilcullen · round tower · 3 km
• Killashee · round tower · 8 km
• St. John's Church, Ballymore Eustace · high cross · 9 km
• Piper's Stones · stone circle · 11 km
• Kildare · round tower · 12 km
• Barretstown Castle · castle · 10 km
• Jigginstown Castle · castle · 10 km
• Saint David's Castle · castle · 11 km
• Kildare Castle · castle · 11 km

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

• Piper’s Stones, Athgreany · Sixteen granite boulders of a Bronze Age circle, with one stone standing apart to the north-east. Dance here on a Sunday, they said, and you join them: the outlier is the piper, the ring is his congregation, caught mid-reel.
• Dún Ailinne · The royal site of Leinster: a 13-hectare hilltop enclosure whose vast timber circles were built for ceremonies, then dismantled and burned.
• Hill of Allen — Fionn's fort · Almu, the white fortress of Fionn mac Cumhaill and the Fianna. A 19th-century folly now crowns the hill; the quarry has eaten half of it.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.