About County Sligo
County Sligo is one of Ireland's most evocative counties, its landscape of mountains, sea inlets, megalithic monuments and wild Atlantic coast providing the backdrop for the poetry of W.B. Yeats, who is buried here. Benbulben's notable flat-topped profile dominates the county, and Carrowmore, one of Europe's largest megalithic cemeteries, testifies to a human presence stretching back 6,000 years.
History
Sligo was a contested prize between the O'Donnells of Donegal and the O'Connors of Connacht for centuries, its position on the western coast making it strategically vital. The town of Sligo was one of the main ports of the northwest, and its role in the 1798 rebellion and subsequent history of land agitation reflects the deep grievances of its tenant farming population.
How Sligo families left Ireland
Sligo was a major emigration port for the entire northwest. The quays of Sligo town saw thousands of departures throughout the 19th century, and the county's already thin population was further reduced by the catastrophic Famine years. Many Sligo families settled in New York, where the Sligo Association was one of the most active Irish county organisations.
Places worth visiting in County Sligo
- Carrowmore Megalithic Cemetery, one of Europe's largest and oldest, with over 60 monuments in a single field
- Benbulben, the notable flat-topped mountain that overlooks Yeats's grave and defines the Sligo landscape
- Knocknarea, the hilltop cairn of Queen Maeve, the legendary warrior queen of Connacht
- Drumcliff, where W.B. Yeats is buried under Benbulben, as he requested in his final poem
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