Skerries

A coastal town in north Fingal, once a fishing port and a centre of hand embroidery, later a resort and commuter town. Five islands lie offshore, and Rockabill has the largest number of breeding roseate terns in Europe. St Patrick is reputed to have landed on St Patrick's Island, and local legend says that when the people stole and ate his goat he left them bleating like goats until they owned up.

Early writers tell of a 2nd-century invasion force that landed on an island off Skerries and marched ashore at low tide, only to be beaten at Knocknagin. In 432 St Patrick landed on Church Island, and St Mochonna founded a monastery there soon after; in 797 the Vikings raided it in one of their earliest attacks on Ireland. Sitric re-founded the monastery in 1120, and in 1148 St Malachy held a synod on St Patrick's Island attended by fifteen bishops and two hundred priests. In 1320 the manor went to Sir Michael le Veel, and in 1496 the Prior of Holmpatrick was allowed to build a pier at what was then called the Port of Holmpatrick.

After the Reformation the monastery lands passed to Thomas Fitzpatrick in 1565. In 1583 Archbishop Dermot O'Hurley, later one of the Irish Catholic martyrs, was smuggled ashore on Holmpatrick Strand. The Earls of Thomond held the manor from 1605 until 1721, when it was sold to the Hamiltons, who appear to have laid out the streets as they are today. After the 1916 Rising British troops landed here on their way to Dublin, and in 1922 Harry Boland was mortally wounded at the Skerries Grand Hotel. From the late 1940s the Quinn family, later founders of Superquinn, ran a holiday camp on Red Island.

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

• Lusk · round tower · 7 km

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

• Drumanagh promontory fort · A headland fort that has yielded Roman coins, brooches and pottery — the strongest evidence of a Roman trading post (or a Romanised Irish king) in Ireland.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.