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Town in County Sligo, Connacht, Ireland
Photo: The.Q, CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Ballymote (Baile an Mhóta) is a town in County Sligo in the northwest of Ireland. The town's population in 2022 was 1,700. It has a castle dating from 1300 but its main attractions are the prehistoric sites dotted around the surrounding countryside, the best known being Carrowkeel.
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Ivy-clad shell of an enclosure or "keepless" castle built circa 1300, probably by Richard Óg de Burgh, 2nd Earl of Ulster, "The Red Earl". It was smashed up several times and already in a poor way by 1600, and it was definitively wrecked in 1690 at the end of the Williamite Wars. The ruin is imposing but not safe to enter.
Museum and theme park aimed at younger children, centred round a Victorian farmer's house.
Good pub, friendly staff, big screen TV sports.
Good local pub, friendly staff, regular music
Friendly comfy small hotel with good food.
Splendid Georgian mansion re-designed in 1864, so expect much Victoriana. It's in a 1000-acre estate looking onto a 13th-century lakeside castle of the Knights Templar. It's now only rented on an exclusive basis for wedding parties and the like.
Sumptuous Georgian country house hotel, now only available for exclusive rental by groups.
Main store in town.
Trains from Dublin Connolly run every couple of hours and take 3 hours to Ballymote via Drumcondra, Maynooth, Mullingar, Longford, Dromod, Carrick-on-Shannon and Boyle, and continue to Sligo.
Read in the guideYou need wheels, the places of interest are scattered across the countryside with no public transport.
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Charlestown · International · NOC
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