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A couple of miles southwest of Drogheda, DONORE 's chief interest, apart from having been King James's base at the time of the Battle of the Boyne, lies in its ten-pound castle . In 1429 Henry VI promised a grant of GBP10 to every one of his subjects who, in the next ten years, built a castle 20ft long, 16ft wide and 40ft high within the counties of Meath, Louth, Kildare and Dublin - the area known as the Pale (the tract of land around Dublin under English control). The three-storey castle here is built almost exactly to these measurements, though unfortunately it seems to be permanently locked up. DULEEK ( An Damh Liag , "The Stone Church"), a few miles further south, on the River Nanny, is an historic little place of considerably more interest. The south-of-the-Boyne equivalent of Kells, it was founded by St Patrick who settled St Ciaran here to build the first stone church in Ireland and found a monastic settlement; it was also an early bishopric. Much later, the Jacobite forces withdrew to Duleek after the Battle of the Boyne and spent the night here, while James himself fled to Dublin and then on to France. The ruined St Mary's Priory you see today was probably founded in the twelfth century, and was abandoned after Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries: there are some fine tombs in the roofless building, and nearby a squat, tenth-century high cross . In the town square is a wayside cross of a different nature, erected by Genet de Bathe in 1601 as a memorial to William, one of her husbands, and one of the finest examples of a type of cross that crops up all over the place. Good, reasonably priced B&B accommodation and home-produced food are available at the historic house of Annesbrook, a short, well-signposted distance out of town (closed Oct-April; tel 041/982 3293, hugh.mce@oceanfree.net ; GBP40-55/?50.79-69.84). William Thackeray in his Irish Sketchbook (1842) wrote uninspiringly about Annesbrook, but its most striking asset, the Ionic pedimented portico, has an interesting tale attached. The stately entrance is said to have been hastily affixed onto the box-shaped house when its owner was told to expect a visit from George IV, the first king to arrive from England after the departure of William and James. The portico was felt a necessary addition to bring the house up to the standards expected by royalty. The north wing, housing a Gothic dining room, was also built in the king's honour, but he preferred to dine in the garden.
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