Newry

A frontier town at the Gap of the North, the pass between Ulster and Leinster that every invading army had to take. The Newry Canal, opened in 1742 to carry Tyrone coal to Dublin, was the first summit-level canal in Britain or Ireland — older than any in England.

Bronze Age metalworkers lived around Newry — three of their clasps are in the Ulster Museum — and Clontygora court cairn stands three miles south. Vikings landed here in 820 on their way to storm Armagh. A Cistercian abbey founded in 1144 received a charter in 1157 from the High King Muirchertach Mac Lochlainn, and stood for four centuries until it was dissolved in 1548. In 1552 Nicholas Bagenal, Marshal of the English army in Ireland, was granted the abbey lands and built Bagenal's Castle on them.

In 1641 the Magennises and McCartans took the town; in 1642 a Scottish Covenanter army took it back and, by its own officers' account, summarily executed townspeople and priests at the bridge. In 1689 the Williamites beat off a Jacobite raid, and around the time of the Boyne the Duke of Berwick burned parts of the town. The 1841 census counted 11,972 people. In December 1920 the IRA ambushed British troops at the Egyptian Arch, and after partition Newry, about 80% nationalist, was one of the few councils in Northern Ireland with a nationalist majority.

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

• Ballykeel Dolmen · dolmen · 9 km
• Faughart · round tower · 15 km
• Bagenal's Castle · castle · under 1 km
• Killeavy Castle · castle · 7 km
• Narrow Water Castle · castle · 8 km
• Drumbanagher House · castle · 10 km
• Moyry Castle · castle · 12 km
• Rathfriland Castle · castle · 15 km

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

• Faughart · Where Edward Bruce, King of Ireland for two years, was killed in 1318 — on the hill of St Brigid's birthplace.
• Cooley Peninsula — the Brown Bull · Home of the Donn Cúailnge, the great brown bull Medb marched the armies of four provinces to steal.
• Knockbridge — Cú Chulainn's death · The standing stone Cú Chulainn tied himself to so he would die on his feet, facing his enemies. Only when a raven landed on his shoulder did they dare approach.
• Slieve Gullion — the Cailleach's lake · Fionn swam in the summit lake for a maiden's lost ring and emerged an old man — the Cailleach's trick. Even now, they say, swimmers' hair turns grey.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.