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County Kildare · Leinster

Leixlip

Léim an Bhradáin

salmon leap, from the Old Norse lax hlaup; the Irish name is a direct translation, first adopted in the 1890s

👥 16,733 (census 2022) 🏔 County Kildare Source: Wikipedia ↗
The story

Leixlip stands where the Rye Water meets the Liffey, and its Norse name means salmon leap, after a waterfall that a hydroelectric dam flooded in 1945. It began as an outpost of Viking Dublin at the furthest point longships could be rowed upriver. Leixlip Castle, dating from 1172, is one of the oldest continuously inhabited buildings in Ireland, and Arthur Guinness opened his first brewery here in 1756 before moving to St James's Gate.

County Kildare through the ages →
The history of Leixlip

Leixlip may have been the site of the Battle of Confey around 917, when the Viking king Sigtrygg Caech of Dublin defeated the king of Leinster. The first settlement was an outpost of Scandinavian Dublin at the highest point longships could reach on the Liffey, and for centuries it marked a border of the Pale. The core of the castle, on a rock where the rivers meet, dates from 1172; King John used it as a hunting base in 1185, and it withstood a four-day siege by Edward Bruce's army in 1316. William Conolly of Castletown bought Leixlip and 809 acres around it in 1728, and his heir bought the castle in 1731. Arthur Guinness brewed ales here from 1756 until he moved to St James's Gate in 1759.

Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Leixlip ↗, 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.
  • 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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