Athlone and the Shannon's Lough Ree Shore

Athlone grew up where the Shannon could be crossed, and that is why there is a castle here. The stone castle was built in 1210 for King John by his justiciar, John de Gray, bishop of Norwich, on a motte by the river, to hold the crossing and give the Normans a bridgehead into Connacht; it stands on or near the site of a wooden castle raised in 1129 by Tairrdelbach Ua Conchobair, and its polygonal tower of 1210, greatly altered, is still the keep. The town sits at the southern end of Lough Ree, the second-largest lake on the Shannon after Lough Derg, which forms the border between Longford and Westmeath on the east and Roscommon on the west. The old quarter, the Left Bank, is squeezed between the castle and the river.