Trim, Bective and the Pale: Meath's Castle Country

Meath was the ground the Normans had to hold to hold Dublin, and the buildings show it. Trim is the largest Anglo-Norman castle in Ireland, begun by Hugh de Lacy in 1172 and finished by his son Walter in the 1220s, and the guided tour is the only way into the keep. Bective Abbey stands roofless on the Boyne a few miles away, a Cistercian house later fortified into something closer to a manor. Dunsany and Killeen are a matched pair, built as one lordship and split between two branches of the Plunketts in the 15th century. In Trim itself, across the Boyne from the castle, stands the Yellow Steeple, the bell tower of the 14th-century St Mary's Abbey.