Moira

A County Down town near Lough Neagh where a great battle of the first millennium was fought for supremacy in Ulster; two townlands still carry battle names. Later the Rawdons built Moira Castle and gardens famous in their day, and Sir Arthur Rawdon put up the first hothouse in Europe. Its railway station of 1841 is the oldest on the island.

Moira has been settled for at least 1,500 years, with remains of earthen forts such as the Rough Fort. The area was fought over in the first millennium and saw the Battle of Moira, remembered in the townland names Aughnafosker, 'field of slaughter', and Carnalbanagh, 'the Scotsman's grave'. The O'Laverys held it in the Middle Ages but lost their lands after 1641. Major George Rawdon settled here in 1631, beat Sir Phelim O'Neill's army in 1641, bought the house that became Moira Castle and was made a baronet in 1665. His son Sir Arthur enlarged it, and in 1690 got seeds of 400 exotic plants from Sir Hans Sloane for its gardens.

Sir John Rawdon was made Baron Rawdon in 1750 and Earl of Moira in 1762, and invited John Wesley, who preached from the castle grounds. His funeral in 1793 had over four hundred carriages. His son neglected the estate and sold the castle in 1805, and it was later demolished. A Market Hall followed about 1810 and the railway station in 1841. On 20 February 1998 a dissident car bomb outside the police station injured 11 people.

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

• Ram's Island · round tower · 13 km
• Hillsborough Castle · castle · 10 km

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

• Lough Neagh — the flung sod · Fionn scooped up a clod of earth to throw at a Scottish giant; the hole filled with water (Lough Neagh) and the clod landed in the sea (the Isle of Man).

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.