Virginia

A plantation town of the 17th century, named for the Virgin Queen in the same burst of naming that put her name on a colony in America. The Irish name underneath it is older and says what was actually there: a field of yew, above Lough Ramor.

Virginia was founded during the Plantation of Ulster and named after Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen. In August 1612 the Englishman John Ridgeway was granted a patent to build a town on the road between Kells and Cavan, traditionally on the site of a ruined O'Reilly castle, but he could not attract settlers into what was seen as hostile country, and managed only a few cabins and a mill. Captain Hugh Culme moved the site to the Blackwater, and in 1622 the estate passed to Lord Killeen, later Earl of Fingall.

In 1642 government forces destroyed the castle and burned the stores to punish the outlawed Lord Fingall, and hearth-tax records of the 1660s show only a small community. Jonathan Swift is said to have frequented the inn here on his trips to Cavan. Around 1750 the estate was sold to the Taylors, later Taylours, and Thomas Taylour built up the town where others had failed.

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

• Castlekeeran · high cross · 13 km
• Bailieborough Castle · castle · 12 km

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

• Loughcrew cairns · Thirty tombs on the 'Hill of the Witch'; Cairn T's back-stone lights up at the equinox sunrise, and the 'Hag's Chair' outside grants a wish if you sit in it.
• Loughcrew — the Hag's Chair · The Cailleach leapt from hill to hill dropping stones from her apron to make the cairns, missed her footing on the last leap and died — her chair is still there.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.