Things to do in County Sligo

Ballinafad Castle stands on a limestone outcrop in County Sligo and is one of the most striking tower houses in the northwest of Ireland. The castle is generally dated to the late sixteenth century and is associated with the O'Rourke family, an important Gaelic dynasty that held considerable authority across this part of Connacht during the late medieval and early modern period. Its position was not accidental. From here the occupants had broad views over the surrounding countryside, allowing the site to function both as a residence and as a watchpoint in a politically unstable time when the expansion of English authority was beginning to press against established Gaelic power structures. Architecturally the building is a classic Irish tower house, rising vertically rather than spreading outward, with thick masonry walls, small openings and an emphasis on defence. Castles of this kind were created to give local lords a defensible residence without the scale or cost of a great enclosure castle or Norman keep. The result was a tall, compact structure designed around security, visibility and controlled access. Ballinafad's surviving shell still conveys that sense of compact power, and even in ruin it gives a strong impression of how fortified domestic life worked in late medieval and early modern Ireland. The castle is also tied to the wider conflict of the Elizabethan wars. In the closing years of the sixteenth century many strongholds in the west and northwest became caught up in struggles between Gaelic Irish lords and expanding English authority, with the Nine Years' War of 1593 to 1603 representing the decisive confrontation. Ballinafad was one of the places drawn into that tension. That historical backdrop gives the ruin more meaning than its walls alone might suggest, because it belonged to a moment when the older local power structures of Connacht were under the most intense pressure they had yet faced. The site has an isolated and atmospheric quality that rewards a visit. The ruin rises directly from the rock and the landscape around it remains open and rural, offering the same kind of unobstructed prospect that made the site valuable in the first place. It is a place where the relationship between building, bedrock and surrounding land explains clearly why it was built exactly here. County Sligo is rich in prehistoric and medieval heritage, and Ballinafad fits naturally into a day that takes in the broader archaeological landscape of the region, including the megalithic monuments of the Carrowmore and Carrowkeel complexes to the south.

Ballymote Castle is situated on the western outskirts of Ballymote village, 15 miles south of Sligo in the north west of Ireland. The castle is a large rectangular enclosure castle which is in a state of partial ruin although well preserved in parts. The symmetrical plan of the keepless castle has three quarter round towers at each corner, a double towered gate entrance in the centre of the north wall; now mostly demolished, two D shaped towers in the curtain walls to the east and west and there are also a few remains of a typical gatehouse. The castle is situated on a small amount of ground but the interior of the castle is 30 meters square. Facilities Access to the castle can only be gained via the car park of St. John of God's Nursing Home. It is believed that Ballymote castle was built in the 1300's by the Red Earl of Ulster, Richard de Burgo and was the last and greatest Norman castle in Connaught to be built. The castle was subject to many battles and takeovers between 1317 and 1584 and left abandoned for much of the time with the two major owners being the O'Connors of Sligo and the MacDonagh clan. Richard Bingham, governor of Connaught, took the castle on behalf of the English in 1584 and remained there for 14 years before it was surrendered once again to the MacDonagh's. Finally the castle was sold by the MacDonagh's to Red Hugh O'Donnell. It was from here that he rode out to the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 leaving the castle to become badly damaged and the O'Donnell clan having to surrender to the English. After this time the castle changed hands on many occasions, mainly between the English; for King James II and local clans. It was the Williamites who dismantled the fortifications and filled in the moat in the late 1690's. The castle is now classed as a National Monument and in the hands of the Office of Public Works who are responsible for its preservation.

Carrowmore near Sligo town is the largest and one of the oldest megalithic cemetery complexes in Ireland, a collection of over sixty prehistoric monuments including passage tombs, dolmens and stone circles covering a wide area of the lowland plain below the great cairn of Queen Maeve on Knocknarea to the west. The oldest monuments at Carrowmore have been dated to approximately 5,500 years ago, making them among the earliest megalithic monuments in western Europe and among the oldest passage tombs in Ireland, predating Newgrange by several centuries. The scale and variety of the Carrowmore complex is immediately impressive. The monuments range from small boulder circles enclosing central megalithic structures to larger and more elaborate passage tombs of considerable ambition, and their distribution across the flat limestone plain creates a landscape of concentrated archaeological significance that has been compared to the great cemetery landscapes of the Boyne Valley and the Orkneys. Many of the monuments are well preserved, retaining the structural logic of their original construction in a way that allows the visitor to understand the Neolithic building tradition. The Visitor Centre at Carrowmore provides interpretation of the complex and manages access to the most significant monuments. The combination of the archaeological interest, the views to the surrounding Sligo landscape including the dramatic profile of Knocknarea above the plain and the exceptional age of the monuments makes Carrowmore one of the most significant prehistoric heritage sites in Ireland.

Classie Bawn Castle at Mullaghmore in County Sligo is a Victorian turreted castle on a headland above the Atlantic Ocean that is most powerfully associated with Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India and cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, who was murdered by an IRA bomb placed on his fishing boat in the bay below the castle on 27 August 1979 in one of the most consequential acts of political violence in the history of the Troubles. The castle stands in a position of extraordinary natural beauty above the Mullaghmore headland, its Victorian Gothic outline visible from a wide area of the north Sligo coast. The castle was built in 1856 for Viscount Palmerston, the Prime Minister, in a position of considerable scenic drama above the natural harbour of Mullaghmore. The Mountbatten family purchased it after the Second World War and it became the summer residence where the family spent holidays throughout the following decades, the elderly earl's continued use of this remote Sligo headland after the beginning of the Troubles reflecting a personal attachment to the place that ultimately cost him his life. The village of Mullaghmore below the castle is one of the most attractive on the Sligo coast, its natural harbour providing shelter for a small fishing and pleasure craft fleet and the Mullaghmore Head providing the finest surfing big waves in Ireland, a destination for professional big-wave surfers when the Atlantic swells arrive with sufficient power. The wider Sligo coast and the landscape of W B Yeats, with the great table mountain of Benbulben visible to the east, provides one of the finest scenic settings of any coastal village in Ireland.

Glencar Waterfall in the Glencar Lough valley in County Leitrim, close to the Sligo border, is one of the most celebrated waterfalls in the west of Ireland, a slender cascade falling approximately fifteen metres from the limestone escarpment above into a pool below, set within a wooded valley of considerable beauty. The waterfall is associated above all with the poet W B Yeats, who grew up knowing this landscape intimately and immortalised the waterfall in The Stolen Child, his early poem of fairy enchantment in which the fairies call a mortal child to a world of natural magic, using the waterfall's setting as a symbol of that enchanted Irish nature. The Glencar valley runs east to west between the Dartry Mountains to the north and the limestone hills of Sligo to the south, the lough at its centre reflecting the surrounding cliffs and woodland in a landscape that has the contained, intimate quality of a sheltered mountain valley quite different from the open Atlantic coastline of the Sligo coast. The waterfall descends from the northern limestone escarpment above the lough, its flow varying considerably with the season, at its most impressive after prolonged rain when the thin white cascade swells into a more substantial fall. The Yeats association gives the waterfall a literary resonance that extends its appeal beyond purely scenic or geological interest. County Sligo as a whole is Yeats country, the poet's childhood and adult landscape that provided the imagery for much of his most celebrated work, and the waterfall at Glencar is one of the specific places most directly named in his poetry. The grave of W B Yeats at Drumcliff churchyard beneath Ben Bulben, a short distance from Glencar, completes the Yeats pilgrimage landscape of Sligo.

Inishmurray is an uninhabited island off the Sligo coast that contains one of the most remarkably preserved early Christian monastic sites in Ireland, a cashel enclosure protecting the remains of several churches, beehive cells, pillar stones and a cursing stone tradition of considerable antiquity in a state of preservation quite extraordinary for a site that has not been managed or significantly excavated since its abandonment in the twentieth century. The island is accessible by charter boat from Mullaghmore and the visit provides one of the finest and most authentic early Christian heritage experiences available in the west of Ireland. The monastic cashel at Inishmurray encloses several distinct ecclesiastical buildings including the remains of three churches, a women's church and the men's church of the main enclosure, beehive cells that provided accommodation for the monks and a remarkable collection of cursing stones, smooth rounded pebbles used in a specific ritual of imprecation that could be invoked against enemies by turning the stones in a particular direction while uttering specific prayers. The cursing stone tradition is unique to Inishmurray among Irish monastic sites and its persistence to the modern era, long after any formal religious observance had disappeared from the island, demonstrates the tenacity of folk religious practice. The island was permanently inhabited until 1948 when the last residents were evacuated to the mainland, and the remains of the twentieth-century settlement add a more recent layer of human habitation to the island's extraordinary archaeological landscape.

Knocknarea is a flat-topped limestone mountain rising above the Cúil Irra Peninsula southwest of Sligo town, its summit crowned by the vast cairn of Medb's Cairn, a Neolithic passage tomb mound of approximately 40,000 tonnes of stone that is one of the largest prehistoric monuments in Ireland and is traditionally identified as the grave of the mythological Queen Maeve of Connacht. The combination of the mountain's distinctive profile visible from a wide area of Sligo and the extraordinary scale of the cairn on its summit creates one of the most powerful prehistoric landscape monuments in the west of Ireland. The cairn on the summit, measuring approximately 55 metres in diameter and 10 metres high, has never been excavated and is believed to contain a passage tomb of the Neolithic period beneath the stone mound. Whether or not the mythological identification with Queen Maeve is historical, the scale of the cairn demonstrates the enormous investment of labour and resources that the community who built it was prepared to make, and its continued status as one of the most visible landmarks in the Sligo landscape reflects the sustained importance of this monument across five thousand years. The ascent of Knocknarea from Strandhill or Grange provides excellent views of the surrounding Sligo landscape, the Benbulben plateau to the northeast, the Atlantic coast and the Carrowmore megalithic cemetery on the plain below visible in a panorama that encompasses the most remarkable prehistoric landscape in the west of Ireland.

Lissadell House is a Greek Revival country house of 1833 on the shores of Sligo Bay in County Sligo, famous as the home of Constance Gore-Booth who became Countess Markiewicz and the first woman elected to the Westminster Parliament in 1918, and her poet sister Eva Gore-Booth. W.B. Yeats was a frequent visitor and immortalised the sisters in verse. The house has been sensitively restored and opened to visitors. The setting on Drumcliff Bay, with Benbulben's dramatic flat-topped profile visible across the water and Yeats's grave at Drumcliff churchyard nearby, places the house within one of the most scenically and literarily significant landscapes in Connacht.

Lissadell House on the shores of Sligo Bay in County Sligo is a Greek Revival country house of the 1830s whose significance in Irish cultural history far exceeds its architectural quality, the house having been the childhood home of the revolutionary sisters Constance Markievicz and Eva Gore-Booth, two of the most remarkable women in the cultural and political history of modern Ireland, and the subject of one of W B Yeats's most celebrated late poems. The combination of the Gore-Booth family history, the Markievicz connection and the Yeats association makes Lissadell one of the most charged heritage sites in Connacht. Constance Gore-Booth, who married the Polish Count Markievicz and became one of the most significant figures in the Irish revolutionary movement, was sentenced to death for her role in the 1916 Easter Rising, the sentence commuted on account of her sex in one of the most dramatic episodes of the Rising's aftermath. She subsequently became the first woman elected to the British Parliament, though she did not take her seat, and the first woman to serve as a government minister when appointed Minister for Labour in the first Dáil in 1919. Yeats visited Lissadell on several occasions and his memories of the two sisters in their youth, The light of evening, Lissadell, Great windows open to the south, forms one of the most direct and most moving of his late poems, giving the house a permanent place in the Irish literary imagination.

Mullaghmore Head is a dramatic Atlantic headland on the coast of County Sligo in northwest Ireland, a place where the coastline pushes boldly into the ocean and the full force of the North Atlantic is felt without moderation. The peninsula extends from the small harbour village of Mullaghmore, its cliffs and rocky shores battered by swells that have crossed thousands of kilometres of open ocean, and the combination of grand maritime scenery and the distinctive profile of Benbulben behind the coast creates one of the most visually compelling landscapes on the Wild Atlantic Way. The headland has become internationally known in the world of big-wave surfing. When winter Atlantic storms generate the right swell conditions, a underwater reef off Mullaghmore Head produces waves that can reach heights of fifteen metres or more, among the largest rideable waves in the North Atlantic. Professional big-wave surfers from Ireland and around the world gather here when conditions align, and watching the figures on their boards beneath these enormous green walls of water is a genuinely awe-inspiring spectacle. The headland and the small pier provide excellent vantage points. Beyond the surfing, Mullaghmore and its surroundings offer history and natural beauty in generous measure. The castle-like structure on the harbour is Classie Bawn Castle, built in the nineteenth century and later the summer home of Lord Louis Mountbatten, who was killed by an IRA bomb in the harbour in 1979, a tragedy that cast a long shadow over this otherwise peaceful community. The harbour itself is charming, with fishing boats, a small pier and good views back to the headland. The coastal walk around Mullaghmore Head, a circuit of about four kilometres, passes through dramatic clifftop scenery with views across to Donegal and back towards the Ben Bulben plateau. The flat-topped mountain, with its almost vertical cliff faces, is one of the most distinctive geological features in Ireland and dominates the landscape throughout the area. The surrounding countryside is Yeats country: William Butler Yeats spent much of his childhood and creative life in this corner of Sligo and is buried in Drumcliff churchyard beneath Ben Bulben. The beach at Mullaghmore itself is excellent and safe for swimming in calmer summer conditions, and the village provides several good seafood restaurants and accommodation options that make it a pleasant stopping point on a coastal tour of the northwest.

Parkes Castle is a beautifully restored early seventeenth-century plantation castle on the shore of Lough Gill in County Sligo, managed by the Office of Public Works and open to visitors with an interpretive exhibition. Built by Robert Parke on the site of an O'Rourke stronghold, the three-storey tower house and surrounding bawn wall represent one of the best-presented plantation castles in Ireland, restored using traditional materials and techniques. The setting on Lough Gill is exceptional: the lake inspired W.B. Yeats's poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree, with Innisfree island visible from the castle shore. The combination of restored plantation castle, literary associations and the outstanding natural beauty of Lough Gill makes Parkes Castle one of the most rewarding heritage destinations in Connacht.