What to See in Armagh - Top Sights and Attractions

The Archbishop's Palace, Armagh, Northern Ireland, is a landmark Neo-Classical building located on 300 acres of parkland just south of the centre of the city. The building served as primary residence of the Church of Ireland Archbishops of Armagh for over two hundred years, from 1770 to 1975, and thereafter as headquarters of Armagh City and District Council from then until April 2015 when that local authority was replaced following the reform of local government in Northern Ireland in that year.

The Palace was built when then Archbishop Richard Robinson sought to relocate the principal residence of the archbishops from Drogheda to the titular city of his office. Thomas Cooley undertook the design of the initial building and Francis Johnston was responsible for designing an additional floor at a later stage. The palace currently sits at the centre of the Palace Demesne Public Park, and serves as the office of the Lord Mayor of the new Armagh, Banbridge, and Craigavon Borough.

The building became protected as a Grade A listed building (HB 15/18/016) in 1975.^[2]

Stone-built Anglican cathedral and mosaics. St Patrick's Cathedral, Armagh is a cathedral located in Armagh, Northern Ireland. The origins of the site are as a 5th century Irish stone monastery, founded by St. Patrick. Throughout the Middle Ages, the cathedral was the seat of the Archbishop of Armagh, the premier see of the Catholic Church in Ireland and formed a significant part of the culture of Christianity in Gaelic Ireland. With the advent of the 16th century and the introduction of Protestantism into Ireland, the cathedral came under the Anglican Church of Ireland, with Englishman, George Cromer, acting as the first Anglican Archbishop of Armagh in the Church of Ireland and remains under their control to this day. It is also the cathedral of the Anglican Diocese of Armagh. In the 19th century, following Catholic Emancipation, Irish Catholics founded a new cathedral in Armagh, also named for St. Patrick: the two should not be confused.^[3]

Armagh Prison in Armagh, Northern Ireland, is a former prison. The construction of the prison began in the 1780 and it was extended in the style of Pentonville Prison in the 1840 and 1850s. For most of its working life Armagh Gaol was the primary women's prison in Ulster. Although the prison is often described as Armagh Women's Gaol, at various points in its history, various wings in the prison were used to hold male prisoners.

During the period of the internment, 33 republican women were interned in the prison from 1973 to 1975.

On 19 April 1979, Agnes Wallace, a prison officer, was shot dead and three colleagues were injured in an Irish National Liberation Army gun and grenade attack outside the prison.

The prison was the scene of a protest by female Irish republican prisoners demanding the reinstatement of political status, although the numbers involved were much smaller than in the Maze men's prison. As all women prisoners in Northern Ireland already had the right to wear their own clothes, they did not stage any sort of blanket protest, but the no wash protest included the smearing of menstrual blood on the cell walls. Three women in Armagh took part in the 1980 hunger strike: Mairéad Nugent, Mary Doyle and Mairéad Farrell, who was killed by the Special Air Service in Gibraltar in 1988. No Armagh prisoners took part in the 1981 Irish hunger strike.

The prison closed in 1986. In 2009 it was announced that the prison was to become a hotel.

Armagh Prison was the subject of one of the so-called Black Spider Memos written by Charles, Prince of Wales to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland in 2004.^[8]