Thursday Doors – The Wall

Continuing with Trim Castle and its features, Thursday Doors takes a good look at the wall this week.

A castle’s wall running between two towers or bastions was called a curtain wall. Built for a defense purpose, usually a moat or ditch ran around the outside. These were mostly very high walls and extremely thick, often seven feet or more.

On top of the walls were battlements from where the defenders could shoot with relative safety, except when a cannonball came hurtling in their direction. However, behind the parapets there was a walkway, allowing movement from one place to another.

As you can see from the photos, the wall and its towers surrounding Trim castle have shrunk in height and in places disappeared completely.

Shortly after its builder, de Lacy, left Ireland entrusting the castle and lands to one of his chief lieutenants, the last High King of Ireland, Ruaidrí Ua Canannáin, destroyed it.

He probably used something like this to complete his task;

Thanks for coming along on another tour of Trim Castle this week. Dan has some very interesting doors waiting for you over on his blog. Next week I’ll be leaving the castle and its wall behind but there will be another nice selection of the towns ruins to explore on my Thursday Doors post.