Kinsale

Where a Spanish army landed in 1601 to join Hugh O'Neill — in the wrong province, three hundred miles from Ulster. O'Neill marched the length of Ireland in winter and lost the battle outside the town, and with it the Gaelic order. Kinsale is now better known as the gourmet capital of Ireland, which is one way to recover.

Edward III granted Kinsale a charter in January 1334, and its corporation ran the town for five centuries. In 1601 the last Spanish armada sent against England landed here to join the Irish, and at the Battle of Kinsale Lord Mountjoy defeated Hugh O'Neill and Red Hugh O'Donnell, ending the Nine Years' War; James's Fort was built soon after to guard the harbour. In 1649 Prince Rupert proclaimed Charles II king at St Multose's Church.

Charles Fort, a star fort facing James's Fort across the harbour, was begun in 1677, and a chain could be drawn across the harbour mouth between them in wartime. James II landed at Kinsale in March 1689 with 2,500 men and left for exile from here in 1690 after the Boyne. From 1694 the town was a supply base for the Royal Navy.

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

• Desmond Castle (Kinsale) · castle · under 1 km

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

• Béal na Bláth · The bend in the road where Michael Collins was shot on 22 August 1922, in his own county, by his own former comrades.
• Spike Island · Monastery, fortress, for a few years in the mid-19th century probably the biggest prison in the British Empire, holding convicts awaiting transportation, then a garrison — 'Ireland's Alcatraz'.
• The Blarney Stone · The goddess Clíodhna told Cormac MacCarthy to kiss a stone before he went to court, and he talked his way out of trouble. Another version puts it before Elizabeth I. The stone was built into the castle in 1446; the legend is first described in print in 1785, so the tradition is younger than the wall it sits in.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.