I moved from Dublin to Trim in county Meath for a few days this Christmas [2022].
Trim is a town in County Meath, Ireland. It is situated on the River Boyne and has a population of 9,194. The town is noted for Trim Castle – the largest Norman castle in Ireland. One of the two cathedrals of the United Dioceses of Meath and Kildare — St Patrick’s cathedral — is located north of the river.
One task that I had was to visit Bective Abbey which is close to the town of Trim and I managed to do so this morning because of a break in the weather.
Bective Abbey is a Cistercian abbey on the River Boyne in Bective, County Meath, Ireland.
The abbey was founded in 1147, and the remaining (well-preserved) structure and ruins primarily date to the 15th century. The site, including a nearby car park, were purchased by the state in 2012, and are managed by the Office of Public Works. The abbey, including its early 13th century church, 15th century cloister, and 16th century tower, is a protected structure and recorded on the register of National monuments of Ireland.
The abbey was founded in 1147 by Murchad O’Maeil-Sheachlainn, as a ‘daughter house’ of Mellifont Abbey. The abbey and its estate lands were confiscated during the Dissolution of the Monasteries in the 1530s, before being rented to Thomas Asgarde, and later purchased by Andrew Wyse in 1552. Around this time the estate lands were surveyed, and recorded at 1580 acres.
The site was taken into state care, and named a protected structure and National Monument. Bective Abbey was subject to a number of excavations in the early 21st century, and made more accessible to visitors around this time.
There was a story of a golden coffin that had been buried in Bective Abbey. A local man named Andy Gossan knew of its whereabouts, passing this information on to his elderly sister, Ann, on his deathbed. She in turn told the parish priest of Kilmessan, Fr. Morrissey, who took the secret to his grave, when he died in 1927, aged 86. This story was recorded by a schoolgirl, Rosie Connell in 1938.
Trim Castle is a castle on the south bank of the River Boyne in Trim, County Meath, Ireland. With an area of 30,000 m², Trim Castle is the largest Cambro-Norman castle in Ireland. Over a period of 30 years, it was built by Hugh de Lacy and his son Walter as the caput of the Lordship of Meath. The Irish Government currently own and are in charge of the care of the castle, through the state agency The Office of Public Works (OPW).
The design of the central three-storey keep (also known as a donjon or great tower) is unique for a Norman keep being of cruciform shape, with twenty corners. It was built on the site of the previous large ring work fortification in at least three stages, initially by Hugh de Lacy (c. 1174) and then in 1196 and 1201–5 by Walter de Lacy. The castle interior was partially the subject of archaeological digs, by David Sweetman of the OPW in the 1970s, and more extensively by Alan Hayden in the 1990s.
The surviving curtain walls are predominantly of three phases. The west and north sides of the enceinte are defended by rectangular towers (including the Trim Gate) dating to the 1170s; the Dublin gate was erected in the 1190s or early part of the 13th century; and the remaining wall to the south with its round towers dates to the first two decades of the 13th century. The castle has two main gates. The one in the west side dates to the 1170s and sits on top of a demolished wooden gateway. The upper stories of the stone tower were altered to a semi-octagonal shape, c. 1200. The Dublin Gate in the south wall is a single round towered gate with an external barbican tower. It dates from the 1190s or early 13th century and was the first example of its type to be constructed in Ireland.
Apart from the keep, the main extant structures consist of the following: an early 14th-century three-towered fore work defending the keep entrance and including stables within it (accessed by a stone causeway crossing the partly filled-in ditch of the earlier ringwork); a huge late 13th-century three-aisled great hall (with an under croft beneath its east end opening via a water gate to the river); a stout defensive tower (turned into a solar in the late 13th century at the northern angle of the castle); a smaller aisled hall (added to the east end of the great hall in the 14th or 15th century); a building (possibly the mint) added to the east end of the latter hall; two 15th- or 16th-century stone buildings added inside the town gatehouse, 17th-century buildings (added to the end of the hall range and to the north side of the keep) and a series of lime kilns (one dating from the late 12th century, the remainder from the 18th and 19th centuries).
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