Loughrea

A Galway market town on the north shore of Lough Rea, where up to 14 crannógs dating to the 6th and 7th centuries have been identified. St Brendan's Cathedral, begun in 1897, dominates the skyline and is counted an important store of Celtic Revival art. A stone face on a building at West Bridge recalls Stoney Brennan, who according to legend was hanged in the 1700s for stealing a turnip.

The area was once Trícha Máenmaige, held by the Uí Fhiachrach Fionn and later the Uí Maine. The modern town was founded in 1236 by Richard de Burgo, who built a castle on an old route between the Shannon and the west coast, and parts of the medieval wall, priory, moat and a town gate remain. The de Burghs took on Gaelic names and customs until 1543, when Ulick accepted surrender and regrant from Henry VIII and became Earl of Clanricarde. By the 1700s Loughrea was a market and garrison town, and in the Williamite War a Williamite attempt on Galway was beaten back in a skirmish here.

At the end of the 19th century the town was at the centre of the Gaelic Revival, in art, literature, games and language. There was little support for the 1916 Rising, though a Volunteer battalion existed. From 1920 to 1960 it carried on as a market town and the cathedral town of the diocese of Clonfert, and the 1960s brought the Tynagh Mines, 10 km to the east.

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

• Turoe Stone · tomb · 6 km
• Dunsandle Castle · castle · 8 km
• Caherkinmonwee Castle · castle · 10 km
• Isert Kelly Castle · castle · 11 km
• Daly Castle · castle · 13 km

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

• Turoe Stone · A granite boulder carved with swirling La Tène patterns around 100 BC — the finest Celtic art in stone in Ireland, probably an omphalos, a 'navel' stone.
• Aughrim · 12 July 1691: the bloodiest battle ever fought in Ireland — 7,000 dead in an afternoon after a cannonball took off the Jacobite general's head.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.