Sligo Heritage Trails

A deconsecrated cathedral on a 6th-century monastic site, a Franciscan friary founded by the O'Hara family in 1454, and a church built almost single-handedly by its own parish priest, scattered across the rural civil parish that gave a whole diocese its name.

From the Curlew-pass castle and lakeshore village up to a church tradition says St Patrick founded himself, with a hidden holy well still gushing beside the old Sligo road.

An Anglo-Norman castle where the medieval Book of Ballymote was compiled around 1391, and a complete Victorian railway complex of station, signal cabin and bridge — 7 stops through Ballymote.

A former rectory tied to the neighbouring Church of Ireland church, a wrought-iron-belled 1840s church, a Tudorbethan mill owner's house, and a derelict stationmaster's house on the old Dublin-Sligo railway — 4 stops through a Sligo village at the mouth of the Owenmore River.

A seaside Scottish Baronial castle where Lord Mountbatten was killed by an IRA bomb in 1979, and Ireland's largest and finest court tomb, taken apart stone by stone in 1935 and rebuilt exactly as it was found.

A Gothic Revival church by Sir John Benson, a Church of Ireland church, convent and railway station — 5 stops through the Sligo village where United Irishmen and French forces fought the Battle of Collooney in 1798.

A short loop around a Tidy Towns village at the foot of the Ox Mountains, from a stone bridge and old courthouse to a riverside walk past a ruined mill and a disused railway station.

A short riverside walk in an Ox Mountains village, past two 19th-century churches of different faiths, a working water mill on the Dunneill River, a Tudor Revival country house, and the grassy mound of a lost Ó Dubhda tower house that gave the river its name.

Sligo's only round tower and its only high cross — the sole survivors of a monastery Columcille founded in 574 AD — standing over the churchyard where Ireland's Nobel poet W.B. Yeats came home to be buried in 1948.

The ruins of Roslee Castle, built in 1207 when a Norman knight married into the O'Dowd clan, a Board of First Fruits church, a former rectory, an 1847 four-span limestone bridge, and a Victorian courthouse — 5 stops through a Sligo coastal village now known for surfing.

A short loop around Enniscrone's seafront and Main Street, from the still-working Kilcullen's Seaweed Baths and its disused Edwardian twin, Cliff Baths, down to the pier and the long Blue Flag strand on Killala Bay, then inland past the old parish church to the ruined fortified house that once watched over the bay. Six stops trace the town's arc from medieval stronghold to Victorian spa resort to working fishing harbour.

A Victorian courthouse now telling the story of three Spanish Armada ships wrecked nearby in 1588, a copper-roofed parish church, and the wrecksite itself where over a thousand sailors were lost.

A short crossroads walk through Gurteen's two 19th-century parish churches and its living home of South Sligo fiddle music, with an optional short drive out to the O'Gara stronghold of Moygara Castle.

Explore one of Ireland's best-preserved early monastic islands, its massive cashel wall enclosing beehive cells and mysterious cursing stones.

A hillside of caves said to have raised a High King on wolf's milk, and the unopened Neolithic cairn crowning the summit above them.

A landlord-endowed parochial hall, a concrete Catholic church echoing the nearby Coopershill House, and a four-arch bridge over the River Arrow — 5 stops through a small Sligo village.

A short shoreline walk past a Yeats-haunted ruin, a working lifeboat station, a memorial to those lost at sea, and the cast-iron beacon that has guided ships into Sligo Bay since 1821.

A short loop around a single Sligo crossroads where a Regency church, a medieval ruin, carved graveyard tombs, a 1591 holy well and the birthplace of a Cambridge mathematician all stand within a few minutes' walk of each other.

A medieval abbey, two cathedrals of different faiths, a Victorian courthouse, and the old county gaol — 17 stops through Sligo town.

A 30,000-ton cairn on a mountaintop said to hold a warrior queen, and Ireland's oldest cemetery of passage tombs, laid out six thousand years ago in the valley below.

Follow the shore road at Aughris from a roofless medieval church to a working stone quay and out to the limestone headland that gives this stretch of the Sligo coast its name.

A Board of First Fruits Church of Ireland church, a convent, a 1932 Catholic church with leaded lights predating the building itself, a disused funeral home with hand-painted signage still intact, and a corner bank on Wolfe Tone Square — 5 stops through a Sligo market town.