Cavan Heritage Trails

A former market house and courthouse built for the Earl of Gosford, now the village library with its market scales still preserved inside, twin churches of two faiths, and a Main Street shopfront with some of the finest doorcases in the village — 4 stops through a Cavan lakeland village.

A Regency courthouse restored as a €2.5m cultural hub, a market house that became a fruit-canning factory before it became the library, and a school designed by Frederick Darley — 7 stops through Bailieborough.

A 1978 Catholic church on the site of an earlier William Hague building, a granite Celtic cross memorial to a local landowning family, an 1821 market house later a courthouse, and the sole historic building on Main Street's west side, a Faith Mission Methodist church — 4 stops through a Cavan village.

A rare surviving Masonic Hall facing its market-house neighbour, a courthouse and library built from a former Presbyterian church, and a house standing on the site of a 1620 Plantation castle — 7 stops through a Cavan market town on the Shannon-Erne Waterway.

An early Irish Palladian house attributed to Sir Edward Lovett Pearce, now an agricultural college, a former Cavan town cathedral physically relocated here in 1942, a Gothic church with a private family transept, a market house turned parochial hall, and a six-arch bridge shown on a 1714 map — 5 stops through Ballyhaise.

The Cavan County Museum housed in a former Poor Clares convent, a modernist 1966 church, and the courthouse and churches of the town immortalised in "Come Back Paddy Reilly" — 5 stops through Ballyjamesduff.

Two ornate 19th-century mausoleums, a bank turned parish house, a cinema turned ballroom, and a railway station turned visitor centre — 11 stops through Belturbet, Co. Cavan.

Two megalithic tombs spanning the Neolithic and Bronze Age share a karst limestone geopark on the edge of west Cavan.

A five-arch bridge over the River Annalee built under a Board of Works drainage scheme, an early Gothic Revival church by architect William Hague, and one of the last surviving corrugated-iron creameries in Ireland — 3 stops through a village at the confluence of the Annalee and Erne.

A 1942 cathedral, the last standing tower of a medieval Franciscan friary, and the grave of Owen Roe O’Neill — 11 stops through Cavan town.

A Seceder Presbyterian meeting house that became a guild hall, school and cinema, a Methodist church repurposed as a Masonic hall, and a court house at the centre of a once-great livestock market town — 7 stops through Cootehill.

A rural west Cavan parish church and its old graveyard, the quiet record-keepers of a small drumlin-country community.

From a disused Victorian railway station to the fragmentary wings of a Palladian mansion and the last gate lodge of a vanished castle, this walk traces the landed estates that shaped a village famous for sitting "all to one side" of its own main road.

Visit the mountain pool traditionally regarded as the source of the River Shannon, and the border-straddling karst cave system feeding the same Cuilcagh uplands.

The ruins of a 1688 Jacobean church, a Masonic Hall built from a former Methodist chapel, and the gate and lodge of a vanished castle demesne — 6 stops through a Cavan lakeland town.

A boat-only island keep where a rebel leader died in 1649, reached from the forest park that guards the mainland edge of Lough Oughter.

A cathedral tracing its roots to the 6th century and a Norman motte raised in 1211 share the same quiet stretch of ground outside Cavan Town.

Cabra Castle, a 19th-century turreted mansion turned hotel, alongside a Fuller-designed parochial hall, a William Hague-designed Catholic church, and the library and courthouse of a Cavan market town — 6 stops through Kingscourt.

A 6th-century monastic church and one of Ireland's few intact round towers share a single enclosure overlooking Garfinny Lough.

A mid-18th-century bridge shown on Taylor and Skinner's 1778 map, twin churches dedicated to the same saint under two name forms — Catholic and Church of Ireland — and a farmhouse with a decorative glazed porch — 4 stops through a village near Lough Sheelin.

Trace the parish that shaped St Kilian, the 'Apostle of Franconia', from the ringfort near Mullagh Lake where tradition says he was born around 640 AD, through the medieval ruin and Victorian church raised in his memory, and into the village heritage centre that still exchanges relics and stories with Würzburg, the German city where he was martyred in 689 AD. Along the way, pass the fair green that has drawn the parish to market since 1621.

Ashlar demesne gates with cast-iron gates and pine-cone finials, a rare Methodist church for the area, a mid-century rural Garda station, and a bridge that once carried the old Cavan branch railway — 4 stops through a small Cavan estate village.

A Gothic Revival Catholic church, a Church of Ireland church with a vestry by Joseph Welland, a disused Edwardian bank building, and an 18th-century bridge over a quiet watercourse — 4 stops through a small lakeside village.

A modernist 1978 Catholic church rebuilt after a 1976 bombing, a Joseph Welland-designed Gothic Revival church, an 18th-century double-arch bridge, and a former Methodist manse — 5 stops through a village once known for its mineral spa on the Cavan-Fermanagh border.

A former Marquess of Headfort hunting lodge turned hotel, a deconsecrated church now the Ramor Theatre, and a Georgian courthouse in the old market house — 5 stops through a lakeside Cavan town.