Conolly's Folly, built in 1740 by laborers hired during an earlier Irish famine, anticipated the make-work projects of the Great Famine a century later.

The Ghost Roads of Ireland’s Great Famine

Starving families were forced to earn aid by carving roads through rock, fields, and mountainsides.
Castle Ward

Game of Thrones and the Rebirth of Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is seeing a resurgence in tourism, due, ironically enough, to a TV show about political violence between kingdoms: Game of Thrones.