COUNTY ARMAGH: Armagh city sits on two hills, with the Catholic and Protestant cathedrals (both called St. Patrick's) facing each other across a valley. Armagh architect Francis JOHNSTON gave the city at the end of the 18th century, (and so much of Dublin), its Georgian charms with the help of his sponsor Archbishop ROBINSON -- harking back to a time when clerics were rich and sure patrons of the arts. At the south end of the wonderful, tree-lined Georgian Mall stands the old gaol, now minus gallows, and at the north end JOHNSTON"s 1809 Court House. On the east stands the one-time school house, which is now the delightful Armagh County Museum. How improving it must have been for the school's pupils to be pulled by the ears and lined up in ranks to watch malfeasants, hobbling in irons from north to south to be held for deportation or worse. How reassuring for townhouse residents looking down from their elegant balconies. Jonathan SWIFT, know for his satirical writings, seems to have enjoyed escaping his duties as a Dublin dean, as he often came north, staying on occasion to play cards late into the night with the his friends, old Sir Archibald ACHESON, the county sheriff, and his lovely young wife, at their manor house in south Armagh. County Armagh was the birthplace of the Protestant Orange Order which was founded in 1795. Today, members of the Order, wearing their distinctive orange sashes, march across Northern Ireland on 12th July each year, and often, in contentious rehearsal, several weekends before. While many republican Catholics see such marches as provocatively supremacist, others would prefer that these parades be regarded simply as colourful celebrations of folk history, as unthreatening as New Orleans' "Mardi Gras," and surely to be welcomed in a province not given much to dancing in the streets. In mid-August, in rituals, not dissimilar, banners billowing in the Armagh breezes, the members of the Catholic Nationalist Ancient Order of Hibernians also march to the accordion, fife and drum. In truth, only the slogans and narrative paintings on the huge banners and the icons on the green, rather than orange, sashes distinguish matters for a stranger. Away from politics, Armagh is best savoured listening to the music in its uillean pipers' clubs; following its road-bowls champions along high-hedged lanes; walking through its Bramley apple orchards in May; or by just sitting on a wall in Armagh's Mall, gentle evening breeze tugging at the chestnut blossom, while white flannelled sportsmen, out there between the ranks of historic cannon, play leisurely cricket on its green, green grass. Once a racecourse, Armagh city's Georgian Mall is shaped like a cricket bat, a fitting design for a place where the thunder of horses hooves has long since been replaced by the echo of leather on willow. -- Excerpts, "Irish Counties," J.J. Lee (Salamander Books 1997)