Cú Chulainn and Ferdiad
The fight at the ford
The Táin Bó Cúailnge — the cattle raid of Cooley, the oldest story in the Irish language — has Queen Medb of Connacht advancing on Ulster while the Ulstermen sleep under a curse. Only the seventeen-year-old Cú Chulainn is left to defend the province, and he holds the fords one champion at a time. The fourth and longest fight is at this river, against his foster-brother Ferdiad mac Damáin. Three days of feinting, the gae bolga on the fourth, and Ferdiad dies in his arms. The town's name is the place — Áth Fhirdhia, Ferdiad's Ford. The bronze sculpture by Ann Meldon Hugh on the riverbank shows the moment Cú Chulainn carries him out of the water.
15th-century tower, still standing
St Leger's Castle
Ardee Castle, on Market Street, was built around 1450 by Roger St Leger as the manorial fortress of the town. Four storeys, machicolated parapets, walls four feet thick. Henry VIII's commissioners taxed it. Cromwell's army held it. Through the 17th and 18th centuries it served as the town jail; into the 19th it was the courthouse; until 2006 the District Court still sat in a converted room inside. It is, on any reckoning, the largest fortified medieval town house left in Ireland. The keys are with Louth County Council; the building opens for tours intermittently — check before you arrive.
14th century, still a private home
Hatch's Castle
The smaller tower-house at the top of Market Street is Hatch's Castle — late 14th century, three storeys, a fortified merchant's house from the years when the burgesses of Ardee sometimes had to defend their houses on a Tuesday afternoon. After the Cromwellian settlement the property was granted to the Hatch family, who have kept their name on it ever since. It runs as a self-catering let now. The same staircase a 14th-century merchant climbed to bed is the one you climb.
Where the wall ended
The northernmost Pale town
From the late 14th century the Anglo-Normans pulled in their borders and built a defended frontier — the Pale — around Dublin and the four counties to the north. Ardee was the top of it. Beyond the town walls was Gaelic Ulster: the O'Neills, the McMahons, the people the Pale was built to keep out. The 1494 Statutes of Drogheda required a double ditch around the Pale's edge. Plenty of the burgage plots running back from Market Street still trace the medieval boundaries; the wall itself is mostly gone, but the shape of the town is still the shape of a frontier.