Get yer cameras out

Wikipedia is on a promotion trying to beef up their photo banks. They are running a Wiki Loves Monuments competition across the world with local/national top ten going head to head with each other later in the year. If you're not from Ireland (likely) you'll have to trick about with the URL to get your local page.  The Irish 2014 winners represent a clatter of National Monuments across the whole country.  I guess the judges of the competition are looking a) for photos that will show what the monument looks like but also b) have some artistic merit.

I would have been very surprised to see that one entry in the Irish top ten list is Ballymoon Castle [R by poleary91] almost exactly halfway between home and work for me. I say would have been surprised because until this Summer, I'd never seen it. Indeed until this Summer, I'd never even heard of it and it's a huge pile of history less than 20km from where I live. But in June I was out collecting water samples and took a new route to Bagnelstown and !Shazzam!  In the middle of a grassy meadow was a castle with walls 2.4m thick, and 6m tall.  It has been there for 700 years! The romance of the name and the site is, as ever, enhanced by french Château de Ballymoon and they're also trying to persuade us that it could be Замок Баллімун.

Ireland is as thick with culture as a fruit-cake is full of sultanas. I think we should share images of this rich history and so do wikipedia: the top prize is €200 [and immortal fame] and there are others on a sliding scale.  The deadline for submission is 30 September 2015. Last year's global winner was 1st Place – the Holy Mountains Monastery, Sviatohirsk, Ukraine by Konstantin Brizhnichenko. It's interesting how many of the global winners were low down in the national heats. If you're from foreign, your mileage may vary, but you should still enter.