Tullyhogue: Where the O'Neills Were Crowned

Three kilometres south of Cookstown, on a low hill ringed by earthen banks and old trees, the kings of Tír Eoghain were inaugurated — not crowned in a cathedral but made king on open ground, in the Gaelic way, on the hill the Irish call Tulach Óg. The O'Neills were made here for centuries, the last of them Hugh O'Neill in 1595; Mountjoy's men smashed the inauguration stone, Leac na Rí, in 1602, and the Flight of the Earls five years later ended the Gaelic order in Ulster altogether. There is no building left. That is rather the point: what mattered was the hill, the ceremony and the people standing on it.