Meath Heritage Trails

From a Norman tower house on the Broadmeadow River to the Frederick Street core the Bourne family built as a coaching town in 1820, finishing at Rath Cross, where Fingal Volunteers fought the only Easter Rising battle won outside Dublin.

A Church of Ireland church built onto a medieval tower with the old town wall at its back, the castellated Catholic church raised as the Famine took hold in 1845, and the ancient hilltop where the fires of Samhain — the forerunner of Halloween — are said to have first been lit.

Ireland's second Cistercian abbey, a Braveheart filming location beside the River Boyne, and the bridge crossing that gave the hamlet its name.

Knowth, a 5,000-year-old passage tomb mound ringed by 127 kerbstones and 17 satellite tombs, the neighbouring mound at Dowth with its own solstice light alignment, a medieval tower house on the same townland linked to Fenian poet John Boyle O'Reilly, and a passage tomb discovered beneath the lawns of Dowth Hall in 2018 — 4 stops through the UNESCO World Heritage landscape beside Newgrange.

A Napoleonic-era church built directly on St Finian's 6th-century monastic school, the Catholic church that now holds its medieval font, a Norman motte and a holy well grouped by the river, a handsome 1831 bridge straddling the Meath-Kildare border, and the unmarked graves of the United Irishmen killed at the Battle of Clonard in 1798.

A small Boyne Valley village with a 19th-century church, a monastic grange hidden beneath its streets, and — a short walk north — the 1690 battlefield and river crossing that changed the course of Irish and European history.

The ruined tower of St Mary's Abbey, marking a monastic site founded in the 5th century, the 1601 Dowdall Cross carved with saints, the derelict steeple of St Kienan's Church of Ireland, the 1812 St Cianán's Catholic church, and the 1675 Athcarne Cross memorial — 5 stops through a Meath market town on the Nanny River.

From a Butler-family castle turned hotel to a 1798 memorial stone and a railway that closed for six decades before reopening — a short Main Street loop through 800 years of one Meath commuter town.

Two Norman sister castles founded by the same family around 1180, one still home to the descendants of the writer Lord Dunsany, the other rebuilt after a 1981 fire.

Walk the short loop around Dunshaughlin's Main Street — from St Seachnall's fifth-century church site and a Norman-era motte hidden in the graveyard, to a Georgian church turned public library that still holds a Famine soup cauldron — then range further out to Lagore, one of Ireland's most important excavated royal crannógs.

Visit the Neolithic Mound of the Hostages and the legendary Lia Fáil coronation stone at Ireland's most storied seat of ancient kingship.

A 1641 rebellion battle beside the village bridge, a milestone once counting the miles to Dublin, a 15th-century cross carved with the Crucifixion, fourteen mills that once turned along the River Nanny, and the Moore family seat whose 1763 lease still names the pub next door.

A 10th-century round tower, three surviving high crosses in the old churchyard, the vallum of St Colmcille's monastic enclosure, the Market Cross that once stood outside the courthouse, and St Columba's House, a rare surviving early oratory — 5 stops through the monastic town linked to the Book of Kells.

A short loop around a Meath crossroads village where a medieval church site, two later churches, a former railway junction and a run of Georgian and Victorian houses all sit within a few minutes' walk of each other.

A rebuilt 1970s church wearing its Victorian predecessor's face, an Iron Age burial mound only half-excavated, a holy well blamed for banishing every salmon from the River Nanny, an official sand racecourse running since 1868, and the beach said to have hidden the Tara Brooch for a thousand years.

A tight loop around a one-sided planned village: a 1819 church turned Credit Union, a Catholic church built on land the Farrell estate gave away, a stone cross moved down from the roof in 1916, the ornate gate lodges of Moynalty House, and the corner where the old RIC barracks burned in 1920.

The Motte of Navan, an Anglo-Norman earthwork above the Boyne, St Mary's Church of Ireland where the father of the Beaufort Scale once served as rector, the Church of the Assumption, the ruined tower house and manor of Athlumney Castle, and a former Georgian courthouse — 5 stops through the Meath county town.

The 15th-century belfry tower of a medieval parish church with its collection of early carved crosses and a Cruise family tomb, an Anglo-Norman motte-and-bailey that gave the village its name, and Moynagh Lough Crannog, a multi-period lake settlement excavated over fourteen seasons — 3 stops through a north Meath village.

A 5,000-year-old passage tomb the equinox sun still finds its way into, and the cairn folklore says a mythical witch built from stones dropped out of her apron.

A short loop around Ratoath's historic core, from the de Lacy motte buried under the Catholic church to a knight carved in stone and the Georgian house of the village's old landlords.

A medieval church tower named for the shrine of St Colmcille it once sheltered from Viking raiders, and the Norman motte that anchored an entire planned borough town.

The hilltop monastery where St Patrick is said to have lit a defiant Paschal fire, a thirteen-arch medieval bridge over the Boyne, and a mill manager's house that grew grander as the mill's fortunes rose.

A short loop around Stamullen's old village core, from a ruined 13th-century church and its rare medieval cadaver tomb, past a hearth uncovered by archaeologists in 1995, to the village's 1831 Catholic parish church.

A Palladian demesne gateway built for a house that once hosted an Austrian Empress and later burned in 1921, a ruined Lynch family castle kept as a folly, the site of the 1647 Battle of Dungan's Hill, and a church where Jonathan Swift served as rector for over 45 years.

Trim Castle, the largest Anglo-Norman castle in Ireland and a filming location for "Braveheart," the Yellow Steeple rising over the ruined Abbey of St Mary, the last surviving of Trim's medieval town gates, a fortified manor house that once educated the Duke of Wellington, and a ruined cathedral across the Boyne at Newtown — 5 stops through a Meath heritage town.