Trim Castle in County Meath, Ireland

This is the castle where Braveheart was filmed. The movie was set in Scotland, but the Trim Castle scenes were actually filmed in Trim, Ireland in County Meath. They must have done a lot of work to get everything together for the movie. There is a photo album there with a lot of pictures showing the behind the scenes production of it’s filming.

Here’s a picture of Trim in relation to Dublin. The drive is 39 miles and takes a little over an hour. There’s another castle or at least a few ruins visible from the N3 to the North of the road. It’s a really nice drive up into County Meath.

Trim Castle is a keep style castle that was designed to be easily defended by 7 or 8 well trained men if need be. Everything was constructed with incredible insight into highly efficient methods of defense. The stairways, gates, windows and all points of access were built giving amazing advantage to the defending knights.

Trim is the largest Norman castle in Ireland and was built by Hugh de Lacy and his son Walter beginning in the late 1100s. It was built by England serve as a visible sign that the English ruled Ireland.

Inside the curtain wall lived trades people who had to pay taxes to live inside that protected area. The taxes to live inside were high, but the protection was unquestionable. Lived outside you were subject to the whims of nearby tribes who would come through periodically and attack, taking whatever they could ravage from anyone outside the castle.

That didn’t breed much local patriotism for the English. When the castle was under attack, the folks living outside would cheer for damage the castle would sustain (no matter how little it actually sustained).

There was some pretty advanced engineering inside the castle. They vented a duct in the stone walls from the septic collection area up through where the clothes were hung using the ammonia to kill lice or fleas in the clothes. I don’t know how they dealt with the stench, but there were no bugs!

The person in charge of the septic area would regularly stir the excrement and even collect bowl to leave on the outside of the door for examination. In that day, they would be proud of darker excrement because it was evidence of a rich castle diet. They would use that to advertise the culinary luxury of the kitchen. Little different than today, huh; now we just have to look into Zagat’s!

We left Trim and headed back for Dinner at O’Shea’s and Guinness at The Brazen Head. Brazen Head is the oldest pub in Ireland. It was established in 1198 and still pours a great Guinness… they’ve been doing it long enough!!!