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- [00:01]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis.
- [00:03]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonega and we're.
- [00:05]
Matt Lewis
Just popping up here to tell you some insider info.
- [00:08]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
If you would like to listen to Gone Medieval ad free and get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit.
- [00:15]
Matt Lewis
With the History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original.
- [00:20]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
Documentaries such as my new series on everyone's favorite conquerors, the Normans, or my.
- [00:25]
Matt Lewis
Recent exploration of the castles that made Britain.
- [00:29]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
There's a new release to enjoy every week.
- [00:32]
Matt Lewis
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe or find the link in the Show Notes for this episode. Thanks for listening to Gone Medieval. You can get all History Hit podcasts ad free, early access and bonus episodes. Head over to History Hit or you can sign up on Apple Podcasts with just one click.
- [01:08]
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- [02:23]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We've got the most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the printing press, from kings to Popes to the Crusades, we cross centuries and continents to delve into rebellions, plots and murders to find the stories, big and small, that tell us how we got here. Find out who we really were with Gone Medieval in this series, Eleanor and I are taking a long, hard look at castles. What they are, what they meant, and what they still mean. How were they built? Why Were they placed where they are and what was their impact? Ireland has been known as the land of saints and scholars as the Emerald Isle, even as the farthest reaches of the known world. But it's also home to one of the densest selections of castles in Europe. That's a result of the arrival of a group well known to you. They're Viking blooded invaders, fighters, colonizers, explorers and builders. They are the Normans and they would change the face of Ireland forever. Coming soon to History hits channel will be two documentaries on castles in Ireland that we filmed earlier this year. One of the places we visited was Trim, an immense fortress packed with design features and centuries worth of stories. So Trim will be our window into the role of castles in Ireland as instruments of conquest and colonization. Ireland had long been a Christian place. It had never fallen back to paganism, partly because it had never relied on Rome for its faith and doctrine. Medieval Ireland practiced a Celtic brand of Christianity, ingrained since the time of St. Patrick in the fifth century. To the rest of Europe, being Christian was good. But being outside Rome's growing influence risked rivalry. There were souls in Ireland, Christian souls too, that Rome looked on covetously. Politically, Ireland was made up of disparate petty kingdoms that were frequently at war with each other. There was a High King, but his power to unite the Ireland under his rule was limited. There had long been a Viking presence in Ireland. The Irish were still a rural peoples, and it was the Vikings who settled towns like Dublin, Cork, Limerick, Waterford and Wexford. As a result of the political fracture in Ireland, Diarmuid Mahmurkade was deposed as King of Leinster. He sailed east looking for help and found receptive ears at the court of King Henry II. In England, Anglo Norman lords also listened eagerly to offers of land in return for help restoring Diarmaid to his throne. Henry II sanctioned the expedition to Ireland. Many who went with Diarmait were from the Welsh Marches, the area along the border between England and Wales that swept into South Wales too. These men were used to hard conditions, border warfare and guerrilla tactics. One thing they knew such situations benefited from was the use of castles. I had the immense pleasure of meeting Diarmuid Scully, a lecturer in Medieval History at University College, Cork, at the National Library of Ireland. I can't possibly do justice to the document that we saw in audio, so it's a great reason to watch the documentary when you can see in all of its splendour, the manuscript was a copy of Gerald of Wales Topographica Hibernica, a survey of Ireland and The Irish, written by an Anglo, Norman, Welsh monk around the time of the Norman assault. Here's part of my chat with Diarmuid about what that document means.
- [06:40]
Diarmuid Scully
He dedicates the topography to Henry II of England. And Gerald's family, the Geraldines, great marcher lords of Wales, were instrumental in the early stages of the English conquest of Ireland. So in the topography he says that apart from anything else, he wants to write a book of wonders. So this is a courtly entertainment. Ireland, he locates at the ends of the earth. It's a land of marvels that he compares to the marvels of east. Says everybody knows about those, but nobody knows about Ireland. And part of what he's doing is entertainment is wonders and marvels. But there is a political more than an edge, there's a political aim to this, which is the advancement and justification of what Gerald will call the English conquest of Ireland.
- [07:30]
Jimmy Gaffney
So that's why we have some less than friendly terms that he uses for the people of Ireland throughout this work.
- [07:37]
Diarmuid Scully
Well, Gerald is a very disputatious man. He would argue with his own shadow, I think, and sometimes I've seen him described as being racist, but I think that's not the case. He, I would say is certainly feels culturally superior to the Irish. He is presenting the English conquest as a civilizing mission which would put him very much in the 12th century Anglo Norman perspective on the conquest of the so called Celtic fringe of Wales, of Scotland, of Ireland in this period. But he's not as straightforward spokesperson for political conquest, full stop. He's somebody, I think, who has got a definite sense of moral principles as well.
- [08:18]
Jimmy Gaffney
So what kind of thing does Gerald.
- [08:20]
Matt Lewis
Say about the Irish?
- [08:21]
Jimmy Gaffney
I mean, I'm noticing in the margin here there's a great big long finger pointing. Are we supposed to notice this?
- [08:26]
Diarmuid Scully
Yes, the person who put that in has noticed something very powerful and playful. So what we're looking at here is where Gerald, he's divided this text into three parts and the third part is a description of the people of Ireland. He had started with the landscape, the wonders, now the people. And he has described in the preceding pages the settlement of Ireland. He's got this from the book of invasions, great mythological history of Ireland. He's got it from Geoffrey of Monmouth about who were the peoples who were here, where do they come from? The last of the peoples are the Irish. And he now moves on to tell us what kind of people they are. And this hand is drawing our attention to a really powerful sentence where Gerald says about the people that they are in gens sylvestres. They are a sylvan, a woodland, a forest people. And also he uses the word inhospitable right here afterwards in hospita. And I think there's this element of playfulness here because he is immensely learned in the classical sources. And the reference to the Irish as an inhospitable people is taken from Sylvain, writing in around the year, I think 200, a major Roman writer of wonder tales. And Salinus presents Ireland as a remote place at the ends of the earth, full of wonders, no snakes for example, but a warlike people who are morally vicious and cruel. The reference to the Irish as a woodland people is very, very significant because there are a number of things going on here. One is that in the wider text and in the conque of Ireland, he would present the English conquest as having been foretold and prophesied. And one of the prophets who had foretold it, he believed was Merlin. He thought there were two Merlins. And the Merlin he is identifying here in this particular text would be Merlin, Sylvester Merlin of the woods. And in another manuscript of the Topography, he refers to himself talking to Henry as I am your Sylvester. So he is the prophetic historian of the conquest.
- [10:39]
Jimmy Gaffney
He's almost trying to equate himself with Mer.
- [10:41]
Diarmuid Scully
Oh, he is.
- [10:42]
Jimmy Gaffney
To Henry's ark.
- [10:43]
Diarmuid Scully
That's it, that's it.
- [10:45]
Jimmy Gaffney
And I guess by harking back to a thousand year old quote about the Irish, this is also the political justification for the invasion and conquest is that these people haven't changed for a thousand years. We need to bring them forward.
- [10:58]
Diarmuid Scully
This is it. And it's not just that they haven't changed, but they deliberately haven't changed. So he is presenting them as physically a very beautiful people, highly intelligent, endowed with nature's gifts, but they have chosen a woodland way of life. And on this page he refers to a classical theory of civilizational advance, that people begin in the woods and then they progress to settled agriculture and then they progress to cities. If you are a citizen, you're a kivis, you were living in a kivitas, an association of civitisms, a city. But the Irish have deliberately rejected this. They want the pursuit of pleasure and leisure in the woods. So it's not that they're stupid, it's that they are intelligent but perverse. And it's classic Roman ideas of barbarians being resurrected here.
- [11:52]
Jimmy Gaffney
What does this tell us about the wider Norman view of the Irish as they're coming over here? Because it sounds like Gerald is positioning it not quite as conquest, but more as nurturing. So there is so much potential in Ireland, but we're going to bring them up to date with Roman Catholicism rather than Celtic Christianity, and we're going to advance their culture in a way that they seem to have neglected themselves. It's almost like we're coming to help.
- [12:15]
Diarmuid Scully
Well, this is crucial to it because in the Exognatio Hibernica he includes a vital and highly disputed primary source, which is a letter from the only to date English Pope Nicholas Breakspear, to Henry ii, a document called Laudability. It is praiseworthy, praiseworthy Henry, that you wish to go to Ireland and restore it to true religion and civilize this barbarous people. So he is presenting the conquest as something ordained by God, approved of by God's representative on earth. I think he's an honest man according to his lights as well. And I think in terms of his perspective on the Irish, it is certainly comparable to Anglo Norman elite perspectives on the Scots, on the Welsh. But because Ireland is more remote, following classical civilization theories, the people are more barbarous. The legacy is that he shaped the way people all over Europe thought about Ireland for hundreds of years. What Gerald has done has been to establish an idea of utter moral degradation, weirdness and barbarism at the ends of the earth. So Irish scholars are desperate to overturn this because in the Tudor period, it's not. For example, it's not a coincidence that in Holland Shad's Chronicles, a commission was given for the translation of the ex Bognazio Heibernach into English. So many of the Tudor accounts and later accounts of Irish barbarism ultimately depend on Gerald.
- [13:50]
Jimmy Gaffney
So in the 16th century, when the Tudors are again looking at a sort of conquest in Ireland, they're still relying on Gerald's justification for that.
- [13:57]
Diarmuid Scully
They are, they are hugely the idea of a perverse, barbarous people in a land of immense natural potential and abundance. But the Tudors will also, though they are far more violent in their language and imagery and reality than Gerald, they see this conquest, or some of them would present it also as a way of reforming these Irish people. And what you're seeing on this page is one of the stories that caused immense offense in Ireland. What he claims in this story is that in this part of Ulster there is a particular inauguration ritual for kings. So the king, he says, has ritual sexual intercourse with a white horse which is then killed. So you see the killing of the horse and the Irishman, long beard and hair. Gerald says the Irish are Literally barbarous.
- [14:49]
Jimmy Gaffney
It's an absolutely incredible justification for an invasion. A sort of sense of a. A justification for colonialism, almost, that would ensure.
- [14:59]
Diarmuid Scully
Oh, it is way beyond Gerald and.
- [15:01]
Matt Lewis
What he meant by this.
- [15:02]
Diarmuid Scully
It is because anybody interested in the literature of wider colonialism into the modern period, the template you see being developed here, and sometimes I've seen it referred to as he's copying Roman ideas, but he's doing far more than this because he's writing much later than the Romans in a Christian context. So the idea. I mean, what is absolutely new about this is this is one of the first times that a Christian European people have been redefined as barbarians, because until this period, Christian and civilized went together. So Gerald is doing something quite extraordinary, and it is mirrored by the language used, for example, of German colonists about the Baltic region. But many of the Baltic region peoples were not Christian in this period. What he's doing is subverting a very ancient idea of the land of saints and scholars and setting up a whole way of thinking that has absolutely shaped and endured for centuries and centuries. It's not gone away.
- [16:07]
Matt Lewis
So essentially, the Anglo Normans rationalized the invasion of Ireland as the civilizing of a barbarian culture. Christian, but only just. They would even claim to have a papal bull known as Laudabilita that gave permission from the Pope to attack, though no copy of it has ever been found. Read into that what you will. Problems came with the swift success of the Anglo Normans. They landed in Ireland in 1169. Diarmuid Mahmokade was quickly restored to his throne. Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke, known by the fantastic epithet of Strongbow, was one of the leaders of the force, and he swiftly married Diarmuid's daughter. When Diarmaid died in 1171, Strongbow laid claim to his crown. This rang alarm bells for Henry II in England. He had no desire for his subjects to think they could head off and set themselves up as kings. If there was a crown going in Ireland, Henry would have it. Add to that a desire to make himself scarce in the aftermath of the murder of Archbishop becket. And in October 1171, Henry landed in Ireland with a huge force. Amongst those who came with Henry II was a man named Hugh de Lacy. He was one of the Marcher lords drawn to the possibilities for personal advancement offered by an invasion of Ireland. Holding lands in Shropshire and Herefordshire along the Welsh border, Hugh's plan to prove himself worked. Henry's force had good initial success, and in 1172, Hugh was made Lord of Meath. Given all the lands of the vast kingdom of Meath, the largest holding in Ireland, just to the west of Dublin, when Hugh was thinking about how to control his lands, well, the obvious answer was castles. When he looked about for a place to base himself, he settled on Trim, at the castle. I spoke to Jimmy Gaffney about why Hugh made that choice.
- [18:18]
John Marshall
Well, Matt, in 1172, Hugh de Lacey was granted a massive territory of land here in Ireland by Henry II, over 800,000 acres of land. And he needed some location from which he could control this vast area. This one here was chosen on the south bank of the River Boyne. It was not just a central position as well, but it already had been an ecclesiastical site before that. And indeed, the name Trim comes from a known ford and used ford over the river at that time. So it was an important communication point. Obviously, the river offered an excellent barrier to the north, and then you had kind of a swampy area to the south as well. And it was on high ground also, so it was an ideal place for that. And it had, of course, once the river became navigable, it had access to international trading routes along the river Boyne, about 25 miles upriver from here.
- [19:10]
Jimmy Gaffney
So this spot just had everything going in its favour for Hugh when he's looking for somewhere. Does the town of Trim then spring up around the castle, or was the town already here and the castle becomes part of that community?
- [19:21]
John Marshall
There was a small settlement, but essentially, yes, the modern urban area of Trim did actually develop along the castle. And of course, by. By the later 13th century, it was walled as well, so very much so on both sides of the river. That was where the main core of the urban town of Trim developed under the protection of the castle.
- [19:41]
Jimmy Gaffney
And would walling the town then have been something like an English plantation, effectively, in Ireland, somewhere they could protect from the Irish?
- [19:49]
John Marshall
Yes, this was a frontier town of the Normans and became even more important once their influence in Ireland started to Wane by the 14th century. So, yes, it was like an English bastion, a place of royal defence of the original Norman conquest here in Ireland. It was at the frontier of what became known as the Pale and had huge significance. Of course, the Normans had problems originally, where there were attacks coming in from the west towards Dublin. And that was one of the major reasons why, you know, Hugh de Lacey was granted the Liberty of Meade, you know, just to try to stymie those powerful attacks towards Dublin, crossed the River Shannon. So, yes, it was very much an outpost of English real.
- [20:40]
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- [22:06]
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- [23:02]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
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- [23:35]
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- [24:18]
Matt Lewis
Trim Castle is vast. It has the largest footprint of any castle in Ireland at around 30,000 square meters. It took about 30 years to build and boasts a daunting curtain wall, a gatehouse and defensive towers. As it became less of a military base, another gate on the townside was added, which incidentally doubled as the gates of the city of York in the film Braveheart, some of which was filmed at Trim. And more comfortable apartments were also added. At the centre of it all, though, remains the remarkable keep. This was Braveheart's Tower of London. Edward I threw Piers Gaviston from a window at Trim in the film at least. But it has some remarkable design features, as Jimmy explained.
- [25:10]
Jimmy Gaffney
I'm intrigued by Trim's keep as well. It's cruciform and has 20 sides, is that right?
- [25:16]
John Marshall
Yes, that's correct.
- [25:17]
Matt Lewis
Why was it built that way?
- [25:18]
John Marshall
Keeps Heather function as a main, at least here, as the main residential tower and administrative center as well. But for many barons, it was really about impressing people and so often many of them were of unique design. Here we have a very square like design, as you say, 20 faces. It looks a little bit like a Greek cross from above. And this is the design that Hugh de Lacey and his builders decided on. A main square core keep, very geometrical design with a side tower on each of the compass sides. And that would be developed over a period of about 30 years under his son, Walter de Lacey as well. So within about 30 years, it took on the height and the shape that you see today.
- [26:00]
Jimmy Gaffney
If the idea was to impress people, then Hugh and Water's work is still working because I'm impressed. Yes, it still looks huge and imposing today.
- [26:08]
John Marshall
It is. It was imposing. It was awesome, really. For the medieval traveler in Ireland at that time, such a powerful fortress wouldn't have been seen before. And the outside of it, of course, visually it looked quite dramatic because, of course, it was rendered on the outside and lime washed as well, so even making a bigger impression, really.
- [26:26]
I
Yeah.
- [26:27]
Jimmy Gaffney
And the main gate to Trim is the other side of the keep from here.
- [26:30]
John Marshall
That's Right, yeah.
- [26:30]
Jimmy Gaffney
But later on, this stunning barbican gate is added. Why was this built on this side of the castle?
- [26:36]
John Marshall
Well, originally there was a swamp area on this side of the castle, and the main supply, really, for the first 100 years was by river. But that did have its own problems, so the swamp was dried out, and it was decided then that they would build a second entrance into the castle there. What became known this gatehouse as the Dublin Castle. But it was a barbican as well, of course, and it had a main large cylindrical tower, and that was attached to a square tower on the outside of the walls. And, of course, they had a drawbridge over the moat, which had been constructed on the outside, a wet moat, which was provided with water from the River Boyne, but also from another little stream called the Leper Stream as well. Gatehouses, as they were, were often the weakest point of the castle. So this one was particularly well fortified with mural passages and excellent plunging arrow loops at the end of those mural pastures as well. It had a pit, as I said, a drawbridge. And, of course, you had guard houses above that as well. So it's very well fortified as a gatehouse.
- [27:37]
Matt Lewis
Like many castles originally built to embed the minority rule of an invading elite, Trim evolved. As time passed, a thriving town grew up around the castle, and today Trim has few rivals in Ireland for the number of surviving medieval buildings. I met up with historian John Marshall to talk a little bit more about the people connected to Trim Castle.
- [28:04]
Jimmy Gaffney
Why does Trim end up being so important when the Normans arrive in Ireland?
- [28:09]
I
I think it's two main reasons, primarily location, both as a political sphere, but also geographical. So we're just at one of the main crossing points of the River Boyne, which begins in Kildare, joins the Irish Sea just south of Drogheda. And so it's on kind of one of the main arteries of trade communication in Ireland, but it's also the centre of one of the five proud provincial kingdoms of Ireland. So what was the Kingdom of Midge? The sort of Middle in 1171 is granted to Hugh de Lacey, who's in English lord as a lordship, as Merkit, o male shockland, held it so literally, kingdom to lordship, ultimately. And then over the centuries, Mead is connected to some of the most dominant families, both in Irish politics, but also in wider British politics. So we have the de Lacy's first Dennis of the Joinvilles, who are big, powerful presence at King Edward I court, go on crusade with him, and then it's to the Mortimers, who are dominating 14th century English politics. To Richard, Duke of York, then, do you know yourself? So I think it's both the personnel and this location just makes Trim one of the focal points of colonial Ireland.
- [29:16]
Jimmy Gaffney
And for lots of those important families in England, do we often forget just how important their Irish holdings were to them in influencing their power, but also their policy?
- [29:26]
I
Yes, absolutely. I think families such as the Mortimers, again, we think of very much in an English setting or even a Welsh setting. They're incredibly interested in Trim Castle, developing it. A lot of these figures are also just this years of Ireland. So these are the primary representatives of the Plantagenet kings of England in Ireland. They're a resident here. And so they also have a shared interest in ensuring kind of the stability of the colony. And so, yeah, Ireland is a very, very important part of these transnational lordships that are reaching across the Plantaget dominions.
- [29:59]
Jimmy Gaffney
And talking about transnational lordships, I can't.
- [30:02]
Matt Lewis
Go much further without mentioning the name.
- [30:03]
Jimmy Gaffney
William Marshal, because everybody knows who William Marshal is, but he has a connection to Trim too, is that right?
- [30:09]
I
Yeah, absolutely. I should clarify no relation that I know of, but yeah, the Marshals, while the de Lacys are Lords of Meath, the Marshals are Lords of Leinster. And William Marshall, of course, we all know Magna Carta fame. He is very much interested in Ireland. He resides here on two occasions, one of them for about four years. But his wife Isabel is very interested. So Isabel is. Is daughter of Richard fitzgilbert de Clare from Strongbow and Strongbow's wife, Aoife, who is daughter of the King of Leinster. So she is descended from Irish stock, Irish royalty. And so Aoife is very much interested, resides here, helps develop the town of New Ross, just south from here, I suppose Trim and kind of this wider Marshall story is about these developing place of Ireland within these kind of wider holdings and its focal importance for them.
- [30:57]
Jimmy Gaffney
So when William Marshal goes back to England to deal with politics there, he's leaving his wife behind. What kind of role does she play in controlling his interests in Ireland while he's gone?
- [31:07]
I
Yeah, so he's here 1207, he's summoned back to court. There's kind of a vicious factional struggle happening in Ireland around the same time as John is starting to annoy a lot of the English barons. He's doing the very same thing in Ireland.
- [31:20]
Jimmy Gaffney
I guess, if nothing else, John is at least thorough in making sure that he annoys everybody on both sides of the sea.
- [31:26]
I
Yes, exactly. He's very consistent at upsetting the baronage so in 1207 we have this kind of vicious struggle playing out between the dominant barons. So it first starts off between the de Lacys and Moyler Fitzhenry, who's just this year of Ireland, John's main representative. And before long William Marshal wants to journey here, throw himself into the lot. But King John's trying to do everything he can to avoid it. And so what's happening is Isabel, who's pregnant at the time, is residing in Clekeny Castle, which is the caput of the Marshal Lordship of Leinster. And she basically coordinates the marshal and Lacy opposition to John, during which the Lacys comes out with a force as Milor is laying siege to Kilkenny Castle where Isabel is. And Isabel comes out to Victor, Moyler is captured and John firmly loses his kind of proxy war with the marshals. But he's very keen to play it off that it's Miler Fitzhenry is kind of a lone wolf and that didn't actually lose, but it's quite apparent to all exactly what had happened. But one of the problems with that is it gives John an excuse to shift the terms and conditions of English lordship in Ireland. And so initially the lords of Leinster and Meath had been granted the four crown pleas, which is treasure trove, arson, rape and forestall. But John then rescinds this claim in 1208 because he now has the moral right that he can. And this kind of says on John's agenda. And he eventually comes to Ireland in 1210 after William de Brioghs, who's a Welsh martyr lord, he flees here, he's related to the Lacys, William Marshal shelters him. William and Isabel shelter him in Kilkenny for a bit and John comes here and firmly stamps his royal rule. But as we know, within three to four years, revolt in England quickly brings everything back and the barons of Ireland rush to John's side and do support him. And William Marshall's instrumental in the winning of the Magna Carta award.
- [33:10]
Jimmy Gaffney
And yeah, fascinating that Isabel has what we might term as success, but actually in the long run it costs because it gives John the excuse to come over here and be even more heavy handed with the Irish barons. But I guess in turn then that gives the English a warning about the ways that John can behave and perhaps influences their behavior around Magna Carta. So again, it's all connected.
- [33:30]
I
Yeah. And I think it also speaks to this interesting dichotomous position of Ireland within the Plantagenet dominions. A lot of the lords have lands in Wales where they have pretty much complete autonomy. And they have full judicial rights and liberties. But in Ireland, the English invasion is one century after the encroachment into Wales. And so what we have here instead is a very different bureaucratic background for this formalizing of magnate power. And so you have this kind of tension inherent at all times in this kind of transnational lordship. And even though the marshals win in Ireland, perhaps they don't quite come out on top immediately at the English court. And I suppose these things can be different at the same time. So, yeah, I think it speaks a lot about this kind of changing place of Ireland within the Swider structure of power.
- [34:19]
Jimmy Gaffney
Do we get many stories of the ordinary people who lived in the castle, worked around the castle?
- [34:24]
I
Unfortunately, we don't tend to get that sort of rich, minute detail. And it's primarily due to the kind of level of records that we have left. So I suppose any records that are being kept in Trim Castle is changing hands quite a bit. It's embroiled in number of baronial conflicts. But also then when Oliver Cromwell comes to Ireland, he occupies Trim and its surrounding area. The garrison flee Trim Castle. And then I suppose, Most detrimentally, in 1922, during the Irish Civil War, all of the colonial records of the English administration are deposited in four courts. The public record office are destroyed. And with that, this vast amount of documentation is gone. But we do know that Trim would have been doing quite well, would have been a thriving town, and there would have been rich trade that's engaging in kind of maritime commerce with, say, Drogheda port not too far from here. And so it would have been quite a hub.
- [35:16]
Jimmy Gaffney
It seems like quite a shame that efforts to erase English colonial presence have meant that all we're left with is the big Anglo Norman names. And we've actually lost the Irish people who may have been living around here and engaging with the castle in any way.
- [35:31]
I
Yeah, yeah, it's not even efforts really. Completely kind of accidental, just in the conflict, the civil war. But I suppose it brings up wider discussions of the role of the archive in state construction and this kind of, I suppose, this dichotomy in present and future, but also just destroying such a rich past. So, yeah, unfortunately is just one of the factors that Irish medievalists and early modernists have in common. I think we have to wrestle with.
- [36:05]
Matt Lewis
Thanks for listening to Gone Medieval. You can get all history hit podcasts ad free early access and bonus episodes. Head over to historyhit.com subscribe or you can sign up on Apple podcasts with just one click to get people Excited.
- [36:23]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
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- [37:07]
Matt Lewis
Today, Trim Castle still dominates the town. Like many castles, the story of its decline is as fascinating as the story of its rise.
- [37:19]
Jimmy Gaffney
And when do we see trim begin to fall out of use? It's a beautiful ruin today. When does it begin to decline?
- [37:26]
John Marshall
There were three main families that were very much invested in this castle in the first 300 years of its existence. They were, of course, de Lacy's. They were followed by the dejonvilles, and then the five generations of the Mortimers, the most infamous of whom, of course, was Roger Mortimer, later 1st Earl of March, who had a very colorful life. But five generations of the Mortimers had it. But once the final 5th Earl of March died in 1425, it was put under royal authority. Various constables were basically assigned to look after the castle, but nobody really had any interest anymore, personal interest in upgrading the castle and maintaining it. And by the early 1500s, it was no longer being used as a residence. And that began, at first, a slow decline in the fortunes of the castle. And basically by the early 1700s, it was a complete ivy covered ruin.
- [38:23]
Jimmy Gaffney
Which seems such a shame when you.
- [38:25]
Matt Lewis
Think this is still such a large.
- [38:28]
Jimmy Gaffney
Imposing site sat at the middle of such an incredible town.
- [38:32]
John Marshall
Yeah, it is. And what I love about this place is that even though it is a substantial ruin, it still very much reflects that classic Norman castle architecture of the 12th to 14th century. And because it had become a ruin so early, it wasn't changed according to the architectural tastes of later centuries. Even in a ruined estate, it's very much authentic. And it is, of course, part of one of the most incredible medieval towns of Ireland. And you can still see signs of those structures within a short vicinity of the castle as well, including part of the old town walls, the last remaining of the five gates into that particular medieval town, and also various medieval structures like a very old bridge over the river, considered the oldest still operational bridge in Ireland, and the very imposing various whole bell tower of St. Mary's Augustinian Abbey, known locally as the Yellow Steeple as well. So there's such a rich medieval theme going through this town, that's for sure.
- [39:34]
Jimmy Gaffney
And incredible to think that Hugh and Walter de Lacey could come here today and largely recognize their castle.
- [39:41]
John Marshall
Exactly. Yeah. And this incredible connection we have with the story that began 800 years ago, that's much of what you see around here, is something that would have been very familiar to them.
- [39:54]
Matt Lewis
Trim Castle is a glowering reminder of the military might and prowess of the Normans who had conquered England and then turned their greedy eyes on Ireland. Once a fortress designed to intimidate a population, it became a home and the hub of a thriving community. From Hugh de Lacey to the Mortimers, Trim has powerful connections to enthralling stories. When Richard II went to Ireland in 1399, he took the son of his exiled rival Henry Bolingbroke with him. That boy who would later become King Henry V knew the inside of Trim Castle well, though he may have wondered if he would ever leave it when his father made his bid for Richard's crown. From a set for Hollywood movies to a tourist attraction, Tree is still alive. Like so many castles, those grey, hard stone walls are a thin shell that retain generations of memories and exert a heavy pull on our imaginations. Today they may look still, but castles are always moving. You can find the other episodes in our Castle series over the weeks before this episode. You can also catch up with episodes of the Castles that Made Britain if you're a subscriber to History Hits TV channel, with more coming soon on the castles of Ireland, including Trim. There are new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please come back to join Elena and I for more from the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all of your friends and family that you've gone medieval. You can listen to us and all of History Hits podcasts ad free and watch hundreds of TV documentaries when you subscribe@historyhit.com subscribe as a special gift. You can also get 50% off your first three months when you use the Code Medieval at checkout. Anyway, I better let you go. I've been Matt Lewis and we've just gone medieval with History Hit.
- [42:24]
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- [43:06]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
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