Tipperary Heritage Trails

A future king's Norman castle and its neighbouring Suir bridge, both built to hold the same strategic river crossing since 1185.

Walk the Tipperary bank of the River Shannon in Ballina — the quieter twin of Killaloe across the water — from the thirteen-arch Killaloe Bridge and its War of Independence memorial to the copper-roofed parish church and the village's long history as a Shannon barge-trade crossing.

A farmhouse where the Young Irelander Rebellion made its last stand in 1848, and the Gothic-themed Catholic church raised on land a colonel gave away.

A short walk through the Kingston-planned Main Street that President Ronald Reagan's motorcade filled on 3 June 1984, past the church where his great-grandfather Michael Regan was reportedly baptised in 1829, and out to the mill site and mountain views that shaped a village its emigrants never forgot. An optional extension reaches the early medieval church ruin at Templetenny, whose name predates Ballyporeen itself by a thousand years.

A crossroads water mill that once drove the town's economy, a Georgian Gothic former Catholic church now a community arts centre, a rose-windowed Methodist chapel, and an 1812 Board of First Fruits church — 4 stops through a North Tipperary market town.

One of Ireland's largest castles and a Regency 'fantasy' cottage designed by the architect behind several of Cahir's grand buildings, both once held by the same Butler family.

Ormond Castle, Ireland's finest surviving Elizabethan manor house, built by "Black Tom" Butler and grafted onto a medieval tower, alongside twin medieval churches in Carrickbeg and a Victorian town hall — 8 stops through a Suir-side town on the Tipperary-Waterford border.

From the medieval cluster of buildings atop the Rock of Cashel to the last Cistercian abbey founded in Ireland before the Reformation, this trail covers the ecclesiastical heart of the Golden Vale.

A ruined water mill and its country house, a Georgian bridge over the River Tar, and the Victorian houses of a village at the foot of the Knockmealdown Mountains — 6 stops through Clogheen.

The Main Guard, a 1673 courthouse built for the Duke of Ormond’s Palatinate, a medieval Franciscan friary, monuments to the Manchester Martyrs and the men of 1798, and two bridges over the Suir — 11 stops through Clonmel.

A Pain-brothers Church of Ireland church, a Harry Clarke and Evie Hone-windowed Catholic church, and a multi-period country house with a rare barley-twist staircase — 4 stops through a well-preserved Georgian Tipperary village.

A destroyed O'Dwyer clan castle and the Georgian mansion built over its ruins in 1730, now a hotel after passing through a viscount and a convent.

Visit the leaning stone cross marking St Ailbe's grave and the holy well beside it, in a village that was once one of Ireland's premier episcopal sees.

Ireland's most complete surviving medieval town walls, a 13th-century Augustinian abbey, and two stone bridges guarding the old water gates — 6 stops through one of the country's best-preserved walled towns.

Ireland's largest medieval priory, burned twice and rebuilt into ruin, and the twelve-arch river bridge with a ruined tower house still standing guard on its own island.

A restored 12th-century Cistercian abbey once said to hold a relic of the True Cross, the first National Monument returned to religious use, alongside its medieval bridge, a ruined riverside mill, and twin churches of two faiths — 5 stops through one of Ireland's great pilgrimage villages.

A short loop through a Slieveardagh Hills market town: a medieval motte where a Norman earl once kept a prisoner, a closed church turned heritage centre, and a tight Victorian group of church, school and presbytery on Bailey Street.

A monastic village at the northern tip of Tipperary, with 8th-century high crosses at one end and a medieval Dominican abbey at the other.

Moneygall's Main Street sits in Co. Offaly, but two of its best-known Obama-visit landmarks — the motorway plaza built in the President's name and the GAA pitch where his helicopters set down in a gale on 23 May 2011 — are just across the county line in Co. Tipperary. This short companion trail links those two Tipperary-side stops for anyone continuing on from Moneygall village itself.

From the museum honouring Fenian novelist Charles Kickham to a Norman castle built in stages across five centuries, this trail covers Mullinahone's literary and military history.

A circular Anglo-Norman keep of the Butlers of Ormond with 101 steps to the top, a National-rated courthouse, and two neighbouring churches both dedicated to Saint Mary — 7 stops through the county town of North Tipperary.

A short loop through a Silvermine Mountains market town built around its crossing of the River Mulcair. In a few hundred metres you pass a roofless post-Penal church, a Victorian courthouse with one of Ireland's best-preserved bridewells, a demolished Church of Ireland's surviving graveyard, and the 1930s parish church that succeeded them all. Newport's layered churches and civic buildings trace two centuries of a small Tipperary town finding its feet on the road between Limerick and Nenagh.

A 13th-century Norman castle, a Round Tower struck by lightning in 1131 beside the Romanesque gable of Saint Crónán’s monastery, and a replica of the ancient High Cross — 8 stops through Roscrea.

Ireland's longest-worked mining district, from Genoese miners in 1289 to one of Europe's largest zinc mines in the 1960s.

A market house rebuilt after an IRA burning in 1920, a Gothic Revival church by George Ashlin, and the town park laid out on the old Templemore Abbey demesne — 6 stops through the Tipperary town that now trains Ireland's police.

A Lough Derg monastic village that produced the Book of Leinster, and the four-towered Norman castle built on its shore seven centuries later.

A monument to Archbishop Croke, first patron of the GAA founded here in 1884, a GAA museum housed in a former bank, and a Famine memorial church — 9 stops through Thurles.

The Maid of Erin monument to the Manchester Martyrs, a courthouse and gaol standing side by side, and a school built on the site of a medieval Augustinian priory — 6 stops through Tipperary Town.