A village with more buried in it than it looks
Ireland’s first recorded game of polo was played on Gormanston strand in 1870, when officers of the 9th Lancers marked out a pitch on the sand. That tells you most of what’s worth knowing about the place: a quiet commuter village on the Meath–Dublin border, easy to drive straight past on the M1, with a surprising amount of history layered into a small patch of coast and river.
If you stop for one thing, make it the strand and the river mouth. The Bremore and Gormanston passage graves flank the mouth of the River Delvin – a group of Neolithic tombs that some archaeologists read as the work of the same culture that went on to build Newgrange, arriving by sea before the great Boyne tombs were raised. There’s no visitor centre and no signage to speak of, so they’re easy to miss; come for the walk and the setting rather than an interpreted day out. The same shoreline gave up a 7-metre prehistoric dugout during the construction of the Ireland–Britain gas pipeline, unusual among Irish boats for what looks like an outrigger design.
The medieval village
Gormanston Bridge crosses the Delvin on the Dublin county line and dates in part to the 13th century, making it one of the oldest structures on the old Dublin–Dunleer turnpike. It still carries traffic. Around it sit a handful of cob cottages, their mud-and-straw walls now hidden under later render. A short way off, St Brigid’s Well at Tobersool is a holy well long visited for cures for eye complaints – a small, quiet spot rather than a destination in itself.
The castle, the college and the foxes
Gormanston Castle is often described as six centuries old, but the building standing today was rebuilt around 1820, and little survives from before the 19th century except the chapel, which carries the date 1687 above its door. What is genuinely old is the line: the Preston family, Viscounts Gormanston, held the manor from the 14th century until they sold up in the 1950s.
The best-known story attached to them is the fox legend. As the head of the family lies dying, so it goes, the foxes of Meath – all but the nursing vixens – leave their earths and gather at the castle door to keep vigil, in thanks for a long-ago lord who spared a vixen and her cubs. It was set down in print in The New Ireland Review in 1908.
The Franciscans bought the estate and founded Gormanston College in the grounds. Since 2015 it has been run by Meath VEC under Franciscan trusteeship, now largely a day school with around 70 boarders. You can’t tour the castle interior, but the grounds are open to walk. The sports halls and group accommodation on the estate are run as a separate concern, Gormanston Park, aimed mainly at school and team bookings rather than passing visitors.
Getting there
Gormanston sits on the M1 and the R132, around half an hour north of Dublin. The railway station opened in May 1845 on the Dublin–Belfast line and still takes Dublin–Drogheda commuter trains; Bus Éireann routes 101 and 101X run through the village between Dublin and Drogheda. Check signage at the station car park for charges before you leave the car. One local oddity worth knowing: Gormanston Camp, just inland, is a working army base – home to B Company, 27 Infantry Battalion, and a former Air Corps aerodrome – so it isn’t open to the public.