Historic Sites in County Cavan

Five of the seven sites here sit in the west of the county, in and around the parish of Templeport. Magh Slécht, the ‘plain of prostrations’, is a basin holding more than 80 recorded monuments in eight square kilometres, and it is where a plough turned up the Killycluggin Stone in the early 1920s, carved with Iron Age La Tène spirals and tied in the medieval texts to the idol Crom Cruach. The original fragments are in Cavan County Museum; a replica stands in the field. The same plain gave its name to the 1256 battle in which the O’Rourkes broke the O’Reillys and Breifne split permanently into east and west.

None of the western sites has a ticket desk. They sit in working farmland, read from field boundaries and gateways, so a map matters more than opening hours. Bawnboy, on the N87 between Ballyconnell and Swanlinbar, is the nearest thing to a base, with the shell of a Famine-era workhouse, a marked forest loop climbing to a viewpoint over Brackley Lake and a teddy bear workshop. Slieve Rushen rises behind it on the Fermanagh border, blanket bog and cairns under a working wind farm.

Drumlane Abbey sits apart from that group, above Garfinny Lough near Milltown, and is the easiest visit: free year-round, a car park off the R201, the only round tower left in the Diocese of Kilmore. Vicar’s Bridge near Shercock is a brief roadside stop in drumlin country on the Monaghan border.