Hill of the O'Neill

The hilltop where the O'Neill clan ruled Ulster for four centuries

The Hill of the O'Neill — the high point Dungannon was built around — was for over four hundred years the seat of the O'Neill kings of Tír Eoghain. The wooden fort that stood here was the political centre of Gaelic Ulster, and at its inauguration stone every new chieftain was proclaimed.

Today the hill holds the Ranfurly House heritage centre, a viewing platform, and the surviving sandstone remnants of the eighteenth-century Castle Hill plantation house. The interpretation panels around the platform tell the long history clearly. Free, open all day; the wind never quite stops.

things to do sight
A story
When Hugh O'Neill burnt his own fortress in 1602 before retreating from English forces, he was destroying the seat of Gaelic Ireland — a hill that had been the inauguration site of O'Neill chieftains for centuries. After his defeat at Kinsale and the Flight of the Earls of 1607, the hill passed to the planter Sir Arthur Chichester, and the Gaelic political order in Ulster came to an end.