Drumcliff Round Tower and High Crosses

PricingFreeFree for all visitors

Free entry for everyone

Entry

Free for everyone

Pricing details

Free for everyone; an open-air monument with no staff, tickets or booking. No membership card is needed.

ParkingParking not known

The Trust's page does not say how parking is charged.

Parking details

OPW's notice: access is across a main busy road, with parking available across the road at Drumcliff Church. A small car park beside the high cross on the north side of the graveyard and a larger one south of the church serve visitors; no charge is published by OPW.

Driving pin: the small car park by the high cross, 56 m from OPW's own pin on the round tower across the N15.

About

In the shadow of Ben Bulben, six kilometres north of Sligo on the N15, a round tower and a high cross are all that remain of the monastery St Columcille founded here in 574, on land granted by Áed mac Néill; St Thorian was its first abbot. In 1416 the abbey was burned and the abbot died in the flames. Sligo's only round tower, built of mortared rubble in the 11th century, stands nine metres in a small walled enclosure beside the road; lightning struck it in 1396, and before 1836 much of its upper part was taken to build a bridge. Across the road, in the graveyard of St Columba's church where W. B. Yeats is buried, the complete high cross is the only one in Ireland known to show the Virgin and Child, alongside Adam and Eve, David killing Goliath and the Crucifixion. OPW warns that the tower is reached across a busy main road from the parking by the church.

Open in daylightFrom OPW Heritage Ireland's published times

Open any reasonable time in daylight

Opening times may change at short notice.

An unguided open-air national monument in OPW's care with no staff and no facilities. OPW warns that care and caution should be kept throughout a visit to its unguided sites.

OPW's notice: access is across a main busy road (the N15); the tower stands in a small walled enclosure on the west side of the road.

The high cross and plain cross stand in the working graveyard of St Columba's Church of Ireland church, where W. B. Yeats is buried. A cafe and pay toilets by the church are not OPW's.

Photo: Drumcliff round tower in its walled enclosure, with the tower of St Columba's church beyond the trees under a summer sky. Shane Finan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Round_Tower_and_church_at_Drumcliffe,_Sligo.JPG. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0. Resized and cropped for display; derivatives retain the source licence.