Louth Heritage Trails

A Viking ship-camp founded the same year as Dublin and later lost to the tides, and the ringfort nearby once wrongly credited as its Viking neighbour.

Ardee Castle, the largest surviving medieval town tower house in Ireland, Hatch's Castle, a second seventeenth-century tower squeezed onto Market Street, Saint Mary's Church on an eight-centuries-old worship site, Thomas Duff's deconsecrated 1829 Catholic church, and the Jumping Church of Kildemock, whose displaced gable wall gave it its name — 5 stops through a Louth county town.

A promenade built around Ireland's claimed-largest public sundial, a Hiberno-Romanesque church with a Celtic-carved doorway, a postcard-famous holiday beach built up with imported sand, the site of a greyhound stadium that once trained an Olympian, and the shallow channel where the River Fane slips into Dundalk Bay beneath the Cooley Mountains.

King John's Castle standing guard over the lough since the 1190s, a fortified 16th-century merchant's townhouse, a carved-window fortified house known as the Mint, a surviving medieval town gate, and the ruins of a Dominican friary founded in 1305 — 5 stops through one of Ireland's best-preserved medieval towns.

A country house rebuilt in castellated style on the ashes of a castle burned before the Battle of the Boyne, and the Victorian parish church across the green from its gates.

A working fishing harbour and its parish church anchor this Boyne coast village, whose quarried stone once helped build Ireland's greatest passage tombs.

Ireland's first Cistercian abbey, later a king's headquarters at the Battle of the Boyne, a Tudor-Gothic church modelled on a Cambridge college chapel, and a Georgian temple that became a Cistercian monastery two centuries after it was built.

A drive-and-walk trail through the Collon area of Co. Louth, linking Ireland's first Cistercian abbey with the Tudor-Gothic parish church and Georgian temple of the village that grew up in its shadow. Old Mellifont Abbey sits about 4km south of Collon village itself, so this trail spans a short drive between stops rather than a single continuous walk.

St Laurence's Gate, a rare surviving medieval town barbican, Millmount's Norman motte and Martello tower, St Peter's Church holding the preserved head of St Oliver Plunkett as a relic, a former Franciscan friary turned gallery, the Magdalene Tower, and the historic Tholsel — 6 stops through a walled town on the River Boyne.

A short crossroads walk through a quiet Louth parish: a ruined medieval church with 18th-century headstones, a Gothic Revival chapel with its 1843 tower, a fairy-haunted rath, and a fine mid-Victorian country house.

A 9th-century round tower and a 10th-century high cross, standing together in the same village graveyard, mark the site of an ancient monastery raided by natives, Danes and Irish alike.

St Nicholas' "Green Church," Thomas Duff's Pro-Cathedral modelled on King's College Chapel Cambridge, a Greek Revival courthouse, the Maid of Erin statue, the medieval Seatown Castle tower of a vanished Franciscan friary, and the County Museum housed in a former distillery — 6 stops through the Louth county town.

A church raised on the site of a 6th-century monastery, the Catholic church whose spire watches over the town, a distinctive former shop on Main Street, a working water mill turned museum, and a Tudor tower house built to guard the edge of the Pale.

The grave of a self-declared King of Ireland killed in battle in 1318, and the holy well marking the traditional birthplace of St Brigid in the same graveyard.

Walk the Bellew family's Barmeath demesne, from a Norman-founded castle and its matched gate lodges to a hilltop 1766 chapel, a ruined medieval church that named the parish, and the last house standing from the 1837 labourers' village.

Walk the harbour, the lighthouse and the company streets of a Victorian railway village built almost overnight by an English railway company on the shore of Carlingford Lough.

A landmark 1830s church with Harry Clarke windows, a crossroads farmyard nearly two centuries old, the bridge that gave the village its name, the GAA ground bought in memory of the priest who founded the club, and the standing stone where Irish legend says Cú Chulainn died on his feet.

The county's namesake village: an Augustinian priory that hosted Edward Bruce, the rare stone-roofed oratory of St Mochta, a Norman motte known as the Fairy Mound, and a hilltop church rebuilt after a 2003 fire.

A round tower, Muiredach's High Cross — widely regarded as the finest high cross in Ireland, the towering West Cross, the North Cross, and the ruined churches of the monastic enclosure founded by St Buithe — 5 stops through a compact and remarkably rich early Christian graveyard.

The last Irish-speaking village in Leinster, holding onto its native dialect until 1960, from a penal-era Mass rock and the homestead of blind poet Séamas Dall Mac Cuarta in Ardaghy to a railway station that once ran a boat train all the way to London.

Standing stones older than any building in the parish, an earthwork motte-and-bailey rebuilt twice over into a tower house and then a Georgian mansion, the ruined family seat of the Plunkett Lords of Louth, and the estate church and school Lord Louth built for his tenants.

A tower house with a roof echoing the ancient chamber at Newgrange, a church designed by Francis Johnston, and an 1883 Catholic church with an octagonal spire, all on the site of a monastery founded in 665 AD.

A short loop through a Boyne Valley village where a Williamite army once camped the night before battle, a medieval church ruin shares its graveyard with a Victorian successor, and a stream still runs past a Regency-era cottage door.