Leitrim Heritage Trails

A short riverside loop around one small walled churchyard on the Shannon, where a standing 1815 church, a ruined medieval predecessor, a family mausoleum and the old graveyard gates all sit within a few steps of each other.

A five-minute stroll around one small glen in south Leitrim, where a waterfall, a vanished mill and two centuries of parish churches all sit within a few hundred metres of each other.

A short lakeshore walk through the village that gave its name to its own patron saint's clergy — from the 1842 parish church to the reputed grave of St Hugh on the shore of Lough Allen.

A working lock on the Shannon-Erne Waterway engineered in 1849, a former railway station turned school, and a courthouse turned library — 6 stops through Ballinamore.

A complete Victorian railway complex of station, signal box, water tower and goods shed, a five-arch limestone bridge over the Shannon, and a chapel reputed to be among the smallest in the world — 10 stops through Carrick-on-Shannon.

A Board of First Fruits church built beside 15th-century ruins, a Catholic church built in 1846, a former Presbyterian manse, and a national school on the Longford Road — 4 stops through a small Leitrim village.

A short walk around a village built on the site of a sixth-century monastery, past two old graveyards, a Famine-era barracks turned parish church, and the field where a defeated French army once camped for the night.

A four-arch bridge over the River Bonet linked to the legend of Dervorgilla, a Gothic Catholic church, a Church of Ireland church associated with the Yeats family's Leitrim ties, a former railway station complex, and a hotel named for the ruined abbey across the river — 5 stops through a village on the road to Sligo.

A station on the old Cavan & Leitrim narrow-gauge railway, a former RIC barracks, and the churches of three denominations sharing one small Leitrim town — 5 stops through Drumshanbo, gateway to Lough Allen.

Follow Leitrim's old Shannon trading port from its harbour and seven-arch bridge up to a Famine-era church and a ringfort graveyard that remembers the man who helped found American Methodism.

Two medieval churches on a sixth-century monastic site the Four Masters called celebrated for its divinity school, drawing students from every corner of Europe.

A plantation manor built on the ruins of a hanged rebel lord's tower house, on the shore of Lough Gill, with a restored medieval sweat house on the grounds.

From a sandstone hillside church to the ballroom that inspired William Trevor and the ruined gate lodge of a shipbuilder's hunting estate, this walk threads through the north Leitrim village of Glenfarne on the shore of Lough MacNean.

Surviving 1627 town walls and a gateway once marked by a lost Catholic Emancipation arch, a country house, a church built on a 17th-century Franciscan friary site, and a bridge over the Shannon — 5 stops through one of Ireland's few surviving small Plantation walled towns.

From a Neolithic burial cairn re-dated in the headlines this year, to a 1570s castle-and-gaol on Lough Scur, a disputed lovers' bed of standing stones, the old fair green, and a lakeside memorial with a direct line to 9/11 — five very different Leitrim stories within a short walk of each other.

A limestone monument by sculptor Albert Power to 1916 Proclamation signatory Seán Mac Diarmada, set against stonework recalling the Kilmainham Gaol wall where he was executed, alongside twin churches of two faiths and Kiltyclogher's only three-storey building, a former warehouse turned B&B — 4 stops through the Leitrim village nearest his birthplace.

A short loop around the head of Lough Melvin, from the ruined church at the old graveyard to two very different Main Street churches, a forgotten street pump, and the burnt-out shell of the Big House the village grew up around.

Follow a Shannon ford that named a county — from a ruined O'Rourke tower house and a Famine-era canal bridge to the marina that carries boats onward into the Erne.

From the Earl of Leitrim's 1833 castle to the ruined medieval stronghold of the Mac Raghnaill clan whose lands it replaced, this trail covers three centuries of Leitrim history in one demesne.

The bawn wall and tower of Sir Frederick Hamilton's 17th-century fortified house, a market house built by the Earl of Leitrim, and the courthouse, bridge and churches of a Leitrim crossroads town — 7 stops through Manorhamilton.

A church built by voluntary parish labour, a convent and chapel by architect Thomas Francis McNamara, and a Georgian house that once served as the town’s fever hospital — 8 stops through Mohill.

Walk from the ruined abbey of St Mogue to Rossclogher Castle, a lake-shore stronghold that sheltered a Spanish Armada survivor in 1588.