Westport

A rare planned town in Ireland, laid out by the Brownes of Westport House around the Carrowbeg river with a tree-lined mall. It sits under Croagh Patrick, which tens of thousands climb on Reek Sunday, some of them barefoot.

Westport's Irish name, Cathair na Mart, the stone fort of the beeves, comes from a castle of the O'Malleys, the seafaring lords of Clew Bay. The Brownes, an English family who came to Mayo in the 16th century, gained the land when Colonel John Browne married Maude Bourke, a great-great-granddaughter of Grace O'Malley, and built Westport House on the site of the O'Malley castle, rebuilt from the 1730s by Richard Cassels, Thomas Ivory and James Wyatt.

The old village stood on what is now the front lawn of Westport House, and the 1st Earl of Altamont moved it to make way for his parkland. The new town was advertised in March 1767, with an octagonal market place and streets of slated and thatched houses; Wyatt is often credited with the design, but the work was well under way before he arrived. The 2nd Earl acquired slave plantations in Jamaica by marriage, and his grandson was Governor of Jamaica when the slaves were freed.

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

• Aghagower · round tower · 5 km
• Doon Castle · castle · 4 km
• Rockfleet Castle · castle · 13 km

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

• Ballintubber Abbey · Founded by a king of Connacht in 1216, Mass has been said here every week since — roofless for 250 years through Cromwell and the Penal Laws, never abandoned.
• Croagh Patrick — the forty days · Patrick fasted forty days on this summit and rang his bell at the black demon birds until they went, says the 9th-century Bethu Phátraic; a later telling adds a she-serpent driven into the lake below. The mountain was holy long before him — there is a Bronze Age enclosure up there, and dozens of hut sites around it.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.