St Ruadhán's stand-off with the High King
The Cursing of Tara
Around 565 AD, St Ruadhán of Lorrha led a group of fellow abbots to Tara to demand the release of a man sheltering under his protection - Áed Guaire, a provincial king who had killed an officer of the High King Diarmait mac Cerbaill. When Diarmait refused, Ruadhán and his companions began a fast against the king - a recognised form of protest in early Irish law. Tradition says the fasting lasted weeks and that Ruadhán rang his bell at Tara and pronounced a curse on the site. Diarmait died a few years later, Tara was abandoned as a royal assembly point, and the story attached itself to Ruadhán permanently. He is the only Irish saint with the distinction of having apparently outlasted a High King by argument alone.
A Mass book from 792 AD, found in a north Tipperary village
The Stowe Missal
The Stowe Missal is one of the most important early Irish manuscripts in existence - a small book containing an early form of the Mass in Latin and Irish, along with other liturgical and devotional texts, written around 792 AD. It was found at Lorrha in the 18th century, stored inside a cumdach: a decorated book shrine of silver, bronze, and enamel, commissioned around 1025 AD by the lord of this territory, Mac Cerbaill Uí Mhaccon. The manuscript is held by the Royal Irish Academy in Dublin. The cumdach is in the National Museum of Ireland. The place they both came from is a small village on a back road in north Tipperary that most visitors drive past without stopping.
All-Ireland hurler, Lorrha man
Bonnar Maher
Patrick "Bonnar" Maher - the nickname has followed him since childhood - is one of the central figures in Tipperary hurling's modern era, with All-Ireland senior medals and a reputation as one of the more dogged half-backs of his generation. He plays for Lorrha-Dorrha. The club serves a parish of a few hundred people in the north Tipperary countryside. Producing a hurler at county level is an achievement. Producing one at the level Bonnar Maher reached is the kind of thing the parish talks about for a generation.
Two medieval religious houses, both now open sky
The Priory Ruins
Lorrha has two sets of medieval ruins within walking distance of each other. The Augustinian priory - its origins reaching back to the 12th century on the site of Ruadhán's earlier monastery - stands in the old graveyard to the west of the village, its arched windows intact against the sky. The Dominican friary, founded in 1269 by Walter de Burgh, survives in fragments nearby. Both were suppressed during the 16th-century Reformation. Both are still used as burial grounds. The ruins are unenclosed and unattended. You walk in, look around, and leave.