Trim

Trim Castle is the largest Anglo-Norman castle in Ireland, begun by Hugh de Lacy in the 1170s and still standing over the Boyne in its full extent. Mel Gibson filmed Braveheart here, which is a Scottish story shot in a Norman-Irish castle — a fair summary of how these things go.

An early monastery at Trim is traditionally said to have been founded by St Patrick and left with its patron, St Lommán. The Normans took the town, and although Ruaidrí Ua Conchobair's army recaptured it and burned the first castle, Hugh de Lacy's Trim Castle, built in the late 12th century, became the largest Norman castle in Ireland. St Mary's Abbey held the statue of Our Lady of Trim, a place of pilgrimage from at least 1397 until it was burned at the Reformation; the Yellow Steeple is what is left of the abbey.

Trim was one of the chief Hiberno-Norman towns and an outpost of the Pale; Richard II stayed at the castle, and the Irish parliament sometimes met here, as in 1542. Elizabeth I once planned to place the new Protestant university here before it went to Dublin as Trinity College. The garrison fled after the sack of Drogheda in 1649 and Cromwell's army occupied the town. Arthur Wellesley, the future Duke of Wellington, is reputed to have been born at nearby Dangan Castle and sat for Trim in the Irish parliament from 1790 to 1797; the Wellington column went up in 1817.

Drawn from the History section of the Wikipedia article on Trim ↗, rewritten here and adding nothing it does not say; licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

• Hill of Tara · royal site · 12 km
• Lia Fáil · tomb · 12 km
• Trim Castle · castle · under 1 km
• Dangan Castle · castle · 6 km
• Durhamstown Castle · castle · 11 km
• Dunsany Castle and Demesne · castle · 12 km
• Donore Castle · castle · 12 km
• Athlumney Castle · castle · 13 km

Straight-line distances from the town centre, from each site's documented coordinates.

• Hill of Tara · Seat of the High Kings, with the Lia Fáil that cried out under a rightful king — and, in 1899, holes dug by British Israelites hunting the Ark of the Covenant.
• Tara — the Lia Fáil · The Stone of Destiny, one of four treasures of the Tuatha Dé Danann, which roared beneath the foot of every rightful king of Ireland.

All of these are pinned on the Hidden Ireland map.