Slane Abbey - 4 Things to Know Before Visiting

Littlewood is a forest covering 28 hectares. Today it comprises a varied mix of conifer and broadleaved tree species. The trees were planted by the Slane estate sometime before 1840. Most of the trees planted were broadleaved, primarily oak which was such a valuable building timber – large stumps of oak are common throughout the forest.

Slane Castle, set in the middle of a 1,500 acre estate in the heart of the Boyne Valley, County Meath, and is the perfect venue to host your family, friends, wedding, gala dinner, conference or corporate function. It holds the Slane Festival within its grounds, with the Irish Independent claiming in 2004 that "Slane today is the kind of internationally recognised venue that can claim even Madonna's attention". Its sloping lawns form a natural amphitheatre.

The Ledwidge Cottage Museum commemorates the Irish poet, political activist, nationalist and war hero Francis Ledwidge (1887-1917). The cottage is the family home where Ledwidge was the eight of nine children who grew up in poverty. It is a perfect example of a 19th Century farm labourer's cottage and was purchased and restored by the Francis Ledwidge Museum Committee in 1981.

Knowth is a Neolithic passage grave and an ancient monument of the World Heritage Site of Brú na Bóinne located 8.4 km west of Drogheda in Ireland's valley of the River Boyne. It is the largest passage grave of the Brú na in diameter,covering roughly a hectare. It contains two passages placed along an east-west line and is encircled by 127 kerbstones, of which three are missing, and four badly damaged.

Newgrange is a 5,200 year old passage tomb located in the Boyne Valley in Ireland's Ancient East. It is surrounded by 97 large stones called kerbstones some of which are engraved with megalithic art; the most striking is the entrance stone. It is an exceptionally grand passage tomb built during the Neolithic period, around 3200 BC, making it older than Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids.

This is the first Cistercian monastery in Ireland. St Malachy of Armagh created it in 1142 with the help of a small number of monks sent by St Bernard from Clairvaux. It has several extraordinary architectural features, the foremost of which is the two-storey octagonal lavabo. Today, the ruined abbey is a National monument of Ireland and accessible to the public.