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The
keep
It was the the house and the
administration centre of
Hugh de Lacy built in 1175 on the remains of an old wooden fort.
Due to the fact to be also the dwelling house it had to be
perfect also in defences and they used different techniques.
In the beginning there was only one floor
to which was added a second and then a third one and was in the
end 25 m high.
There was a public area, the private
rooms, a small family church and all they needed for a living
like kitchen, lavatory, rooms for the priest and the officials,
a small garrison and good filled cellars in case of a longer
assault.
The inclinations at the walls and the
staircase to the entrance were added only in the XIII century.
From the originally four towers there remain only three of them.
The entrance to the keep was built of
stone only in the end of 1100, had a few rooms - shops,
waiting-rooms, control-room - and were a further protection to
the real entrance. The whole was further assured by a
dwell-bridge over a deep moat. Later after closing the whole
complex with the well done outer wall the moat was filled and
the dwell-bridge substituted by a stone bridge with a
waiting-room.
The Barbican gate
It is called also the Dublin gate due to
the fact the street was the one to Dublin Very curious is that
along the street to the castle there were palisades on both
sides. Due to a very clever system for defence with drawbridge,
gates and rooms for control it was very easy to know exactly who
was coming in, who was going out.
The
curtain walls
The outer walls is more than 500 m long
and is going in a lightly rounded triangle around the complex.
About two third there are still visible today. The wall has
eight towers, half-round and rectangular, and can be defended on
two levels among small gaps in the wall. Furthermore there are
two of the great main-gates.
The complex was easily to defend due to
the river on the north-west and the fields in the south-west
easily to drawn. For an even better defence there was built a
deep moat where the defence was not so perfect.
On the wall there was a wooden platform
for a better defence.
The Trim gate
The gate was leading to Trim, important
place for merchants, is now the entrance to the castle.
The
great hall
The hall was built later and is situated
near to the harbour. High windows gave much light and a
beautiful view on the river, St. Mary's abbey and the bell-tower
and the Talbot mansion. The hall was built as a substitution to
the hall in the keep which was on the third floor and not easy
to reach on dark and small spiral-cases.
The harbour
The harbour was used for merchandize, to
receive livings and to go to the sea where the bigger ships were
lying.
The the mint
Here they were coining the 'Patricks' and 'Irelands'
in the XV century.
St. Mary' abbey and the yellow
steeple
It was an Augustine abbey of the XII
century in which was preserved a statue of the Holy Mother Mary
of Trim that was found on the beaches at Drogheda. 1368 the
abbey was restored but during the dissolution of the churches
and abbeys under Henry VIII Cromwell burned the abbey and the
statue to the ground. Of the abbey on the other side of the
river and in front of the castle there is nothing anymore to
see. The only remaining is the bell-tower, the 'yellow steeple',
with his nearly 40 m height. The yellow is coming from the fact
that in the evening sun the stone has a light yellow glow. |
