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00:00Castles are our most dramatic landmarks from the Middle Ages, built as monuments to domination and power.
00:11Scattered all over the Irish landscape, these ancient buildings with their soaring walls and great towers leave you with no doubt about their military and defensive purpose.
00:21I just hope we brought a ladder.
00:24The Anglo-Norman aristocrats who invaded Ireland in the 12th century built their castles to control and intimidate the unruly Irish.
00:34As English rule was consolidated, the castles served as administrative centres, garrisons and jails, as well as lavish homes for the English lords.
00:48In this series, I'll be telling you stories about dramatic sieges, bloody battles, lavish lifestyles, ghostly presences, warring families and feudal lords.
01:00After all, the history of Irish castles is the history of Ireland itself.
01:05History is not really my thing. I didn't keep it up in school. I didn't know that Dublin had been a walled city.
01:23Nor did I realise that all our castles were built by the same bunch.
01:27Those guys called the Anglo-Normans, the descendants of the French from Normandy, that conquered England at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 and became the ruling elite.
01:41At the time, the Irish would have been living in Ringforts, basically. Stone houses in Ringforts, a lot of the time.
01:53The landscape of Ireland is dotted with Ringforts. These are the fortified residences of the local aristocracy, the big farmers.
02:02Living alongside the native Irish, we had the Vikings. Those big fellows from Scandinavia had been around for 300 years and controlled the trading ports of Limerick, Wexford, Waterford and most importantly of all, Dublin.
02:16So, Pat, take me back to Viking Dublin. What was it like?
02:19Oh, an incredibly cramped city, a smelly city, a noisy city, a busy city. Manufacturing going on. We were even making new longboats here.
02:29The big battleships of the Viking fleet were made in Dublin because we'd oak forests all around the city.
02:34So, apart from the heavy levels of manufacturing is still the same then, it's still noisy and smelly.
02:39The importance of the Viking towns cannot be overstated, really, because those who controlled a Viking town could become powerful and wealthy. Dublin, of course, was always the big prize.
02:56So, this was the edge of the city.
02:57And these walls here were actually built by the Vikings. We were walking on what was once the River Liffey, which almost came up and lapped against these walls.
03:04So, the Liffey actually came up to here?
03:05It did.
03:0612th century Ireland was a hodgepodge of warring clans and regional kings, all trying to assert power.
03:13Two main rivals of the day were Rory O'Connor, the High King of Ireland, and Dermot McMurray, King of Leinster.
03:19Oh, well, Dermot McMurray was King of Leinster and he was widely acknowledged as really a despot.
03:27Dermot, of course, gets a very bad press as the guy who invited the Normans into Ireland. But, of course, Dermot was very much a man of his time.
03:40In 1967, a bloody feud saw Dermot stripped of his kingship, but rather than just throw in the towel, he sailed off to England seeking help from King Henry II.
03:49Initially, Henry didn't want to get directly involved, but he did give Dermot permission to look for support from his fighting elite, the powerful knights.
03:58One such knight was the Welsh Richard de Clare, known to all of us as Strongbow. Dermot offered Strongbow lands, his daughter Aoife in marriage, and so eventually his kingship in Materne for help. And so a deal was struck.
04:12Richard Fitzgillbert de Clare, he's the Earl of Pembroke in Wales. He is the son of a very famous Norman family who are down on their luck a wee bit.
04:22They backed the wrong side in the English Civil War earlier in the 12th century. He's looking to make money and he's looking to get away from the overlordship of the King of England.
04:31And Dermot McMurray arrives at just the right time because Strongbow needs to get out of England and make a name for himself.
04:38And he does exactly that when he takes the Kingdom of Leinster.
04:41The plan was to invade Ireland via the South East before moving on to Dublin.
04:46The Anglo-Norman mercenaries, with their knights on horseback and skilled archers, were the most technologically advanced army of the time.
04:54The Irish wouldn't know what hit them.
04:57These guys were extremely well trained and trained to fight as units, as militarised units.
05:05When William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, his Norman soldiers brought with them loads of newfangled fashions. The lance, the kite shield and the very height of fashion, chain mail.
05:19All of this sorted out the English at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. Just like they sorted us out a hundred years later.
05:26It's actually quite remarkable. There's very few men involved in the initial landing.
05:33The secret to fighting war in many cases is to win the psychological battle. So if you arrive and you look intimidating and you scare the enemy, you've actually won the battle at that stage. The enemy doesn't want to fight you.
05:45Irish people would never have seen knights on horseback. They wouldn't have seen men with bows and arrows. Their organisation, their building skills, their horsemen. It was just something that they had never come across before.
05:59So the combination of archery and horses, which were basically the medieval tanks, they had huge success.
06:07So here he is. The guy that we all blame for the 800 years of oppression. You see, I was listening that day in school. But the truth of the matter was that Strongbow wasn't really representing the English crown.
06:26The first invasion was more of a big family enterprise, where everybody was working on a freelance basis. Strongbow was offered a really good deal, though.
06:36He was offered a title, pretty young girl, some land and some cold hard cash. Now it was going to be a high risk venture. I mean, he wins the battle and he collects the prize. Or he loses the battle and goes home with nothing. Or more than likely gets killed in the attempt. Kind of a high risk version of deal or no deal, really.
06:55In May 1169, they landed near Bano Bay. Wexford was the first Viking town to fall. Taking Waterford would be the next part of the strategy.
07:11The attackers managed to pull down part of the wall and enter through the breach and just slaughtered everything that came near them.
07:22Reginald's Tower in Waterford was at the time a wooden Viking structure. And it was here that Strongbow executed the last Viking king of the city.
07:31Within several years, the conquerors would replace it with this stone tower. Stout, solid and indestructible.
07:38With its ten feet thick walls, Reginald's tower was impenetrable and a potent symbol of what was to come.
07:45These stone buildings were to become the hallmark of the Anglo-Norman invasion. And within 30 years, they would command the landscape from Waterford to Belfast Lock and west to the banks of the Shannon.
07:58With the South East taken, it was time for all the conquering knights to opt for a wedding. Invitations were sent out and suits were hired and polished for the event of the year.
08:11The marriage of Strongbow and 25-year-old Aoife, Princess of Leinster.
08:19You see, the Irish aristocracy were marrying off their daughters to other aristocrats, you know, from time immemorial.
08:29Daniel McAleese's painting of the scene is probably rather a romanticised image. I'm sure they cleared all the bodies away before the bride walked down the aisle.
08:40No, she wouldn't have got married surrounded by hordes of bodies and weeping women. That's not the way it would have happened.
08:46But I think it would have also sent out, very clearly sent out the signal that these guys were here to stay.
08:51They weren't just going to sort of rob the cattle and head home. These guys were in Ireland to stay.
08:59And that, I'm sure, would have sent a chill down many a spine.
09:04King Henry didn't like Strongbow to begin with. So when he heard that Strongbow was going native,
09:09swanning around the place marrying Irish princesses and calling himself the King of Leinster.
09:15Well, then it was time to act. So in 1171, Henry arrived with 400 ships packed with horses and men,
09:22and enough supplies to do the lot of them. It must have taken them ages to pack.
09:28Henry was the first English king ever to set foot in Ireland, and his presence put Strongbow back in his place.
09:33Together they moved north, with Dublin in their sights.
09:38Strongbow has been moved out from Waterford, and their better equipment, the use of cavalry allowed them a huge advantage over the Irish.
09:45And they were able to dominate any skirmishes that came along.
09:49And very quickly overran, I suppose most to Leinster.
09:54And they then moved on Dublin.
09:58Back then, controlling Dublin was the key. You see, Dublin was a thriving Viking town.
10:04It minted coins and the locals paid taxes.
10:07And from here, the Vikings traded up and down the channel, north to Scandinavia and south to Spain and France.
10:14So when the Normans arrived, capturing Dublin was really important.
10:18I mean, troops from England could be dropped here at any moment, and then dispatched north, west or south.
10:26Or wherever they needed to kick ass.
10:31Realising what was afoot, the Irish finally pulled together under Rory O'Connor, the High King of the day.
10:38But unfortunately, not the best man for the job.
10:40It's just a pity for Ireland that probably the least effective of all the O'Connors in terms of military leadership was High King at the time of the Anglo-Norman invasion.
10:53He's not the guy I would have voted for.
10:57With 10,000 troops grouped around Dublin, the city waited for the Anglo-Normans to arrive.
11:01So you see, Rory wasn't the brightest, bless him.
11:07He thought he'd blocked all the roads coming into Dublin from the south, so he amassed his army out in Clendalkan.
11:13For some reason, he was expecting them to arrive that way.
11:16But you see, Diermund, he knew all the roads in Leinster.
11:19And why wouldn't he? He was the King of Leinster.
11:22So he marched the army over the mountains that came in through Glendalough.
11:25So one morning, the people of Dublin woke up, and the Normans were at the gate.
11:28Game over.
11:32The invading army came rushing over the city walls, massacring any resistance on their way,
11:38and taking the timber Viking fortress at its centre.
11:46They were in.
11:47They were in, but there were many attempts to get them out.
11:50The High King of Ireland did his best, surrounded the city with about 10,000 troops, but the Normans defeated them.
11:55The Vikings made one attempt to take back the city.
11:59They failed.
12:00So, but life went on.
12:02I mean, the tradespeople of the city were still doing their trades.
12:05Imports, exports went on just the same.
12:07The Viking ships were still used for, you know, goods, bringing them in, bringing them out.
12:12And the Vikings themselves just moved from one side of the city, they went from the south side to the north side.
12:18So nothing much changed?
12:19Not an awful lot changed.
12:21Not at first, at any rate.
12:23The citizens didn't see that much difference yet.
12:25The conquering force identified the site of the Viking citadel as the best spot for their defensive castle.
12:32Initially, they had to make do with a modern daily structure.
12:36It would be nearly 40 years later before they would acquire the land and begin building the large defensive walls and towers that would make up Dublin Castle.
12:43When Jermot McMorrow went off to England looking for hired muscle, he unleashed an invasion that would see the eventual conquest of Ireland and bring about our first ever building boom.
12:55Strongbow, with his battle-hard mercenaries and superior firepower, quickly overran the lands east of the Shannon.
13:02Power would now be managed through a network of defensive castles, the likes of which had never been seen before in Ireland.
13:07The Anglo-Norman regime of castle building had begun.
13:11And the Irish had simply blown it.
13:13O'Connor had simply blown it and the Hiberno-Norse had blown it.
13:19When the Anglo-Normans established their castle in Dublin, it would be 1922 before the city would rule its own affairs again.
13:27The political landscape was changed forever.
13:30Right, so we're now entering...
13:37St. Patrick's Hall, the most important room in Dublin Castle.
13:40This is the function room.
13:41It is indeed, and this is where we have the presidential inauguration and all of our state banquets for visiting royalty and visiting states of state.
13:49And the ceiling.
13:50I know, the ceiling is amazing.
13:52So what are we looking at?
13:53The submission of the Irish chieftains in 1169.
13:55The submission of the Irish chieftains?
13:57Yes, when they submitted to Henry II, the King of England.
14:01So you have them there, lining up in front, ready to hand the country over.
14:06Just like that?
14:07Well, it is obviously a romantical representation of what happened, but within a year or two, yeah, they had all submitted.
14:12And of course, they're all dressed in armour and the Irish are...
14:14And the Irish aren't, exactly.
14:15The day were.
14:16Yeah, it's a representation that they were considered, you know, lower status, lower class.
14:20They were almost considered to be savages in comparison to the English.
14:24And who's the gentleman that handed it to?
14:26Well, that's the infamous King Henry II.
14:28Right.
14:29Yeah.
14:30So he was the one that Dermot went to to have permission for Strongbow to come and to interfere in our matters.
14:36And also, Henry II is the father of the very famous Richard the Lionheart and John I.
14:41And John I was the one that built Dublin Castle and built the very first castle here on this site.
14:46For the English crown to hold onto power in Ireland, they needed a network of loyal subjects to defend its interests.
14:53So the land was parceled out to the favoured knights and the great land grab began.
14:57I think what the Anglo-Norman magnates were most interested in was ensuring that they grabbed whatever land was on offer to them.
15:08And that they could fortify it and keep that land in their possession.
15:21They start building all along the East Coast.
15:23I mean, they start building fairly early on in Dublin as well.
15:26What they do is erect moths and baileys at key points, usually key crossing points at rivers and places like that.
15:36It was about dominating the landscape.
15:38By putting a castle down, you're saying we're here for the long term.
15:41Whenever the Normans moved in, they built a fortification.
15:45And the initial castles that they built were of earth and stone and timber.
15:51And from that initial kind of fortified area, they would then build a stone castle.
15:57And then very quickly it takes on the manner of English living.
16:01Before Henry left Ireland, he tried to put a system in place that would prevent future acts of rebellion.
16:08Increasingly wary of Strongbow, especially since his marriage to Aoife and then Dermot's death in 1171 had made Strongbow King of Leinster,
16:17Henry began dividing out the land to other trusted knights as a way of keeping him in check.
16:23Henry II was rather worried that Strongbow would become the King of Ireland.
16:30You always had to be worried in medieval times.
16:35You might get stabbed in the back or you might get poisoned or beheaded or whatever it was.
16:39So he needed a counterbalance against Strongbow.
16:43And that counterbalance was Hugh de Lacey.
16:46Hugh de Lacey was not one of Strongbow's original gang from Wales.
16:51Loyal to Henry, now calling himself Lord of Ireland, de Lacey was rewarded with huge tracts of land north of Dublin
16:59and the titles Lord of Meath and Chief Governor.
17:03As with any great Anglo-Norman lord, he is trying to stamp his authority on his new kingdom.
17:08I mean, he's been given the kingdom of Meath but he has to conquer it.
17:11I mean, Henry II handed it to him but it wasn't his. He had to actually win it.
17:16Hugh de Lacey built what was to be one of the first and the finest baronial castles in either Ireland or England.
17:26A trim castle for me is just amazing.
17:30I think it's really imposing.
17:34No other castle is anything like trim.
17:38It was a fortress really on the European scale.
17:44As a dub, I hate to say this, but County Meath has the best and most impressive Norman castle in Ireland.
17:52You see, as a lord, it wasn't important that you had a castle with 22 arrow loops, a couple of baileys, lots of gates,
17:58three ensuite garter robes, which of course are toilets, a curtain wall and a great hall.
18:04But it sure did make you look good.
18:12At the time, this magnificent structure was the most imposing building in the land.
18:18Built on a hill above the River Boyne, its massive wall was studded with seven towers and two heavily defended gates.
18:26You can see why they shot the movie Braveheart here.
18:30The Lacey picked trim because it was on the River Boyne and he had easy access to the medieval port in Drogheda,
18:50so he could bring supplies up.
18:52Rivers were the highways, medieval highways.
18:55If you think of trying to get a wagon load of pottery from Dublin to trim in the medieval period,
19:02it was much safer to put on a boat if it got there intact.
19:05This area here is where the Boyne River flowed in against the base of the curtain walls
19:12and this is where they were able to moor the flat bottom boats that came up from the port in Drogheda,
19:19bringing supplies to the castle.
19:21De Lacey's original castle was a timber construction surrounded by a defensive ditch perched up on the hill.
19:27But they soon began work on the permanent and impressive stone keep.
19:31I mean the Irish had never seen the likes of that before.
19:34Next was the curtain wall and that created this huge outer yard area or bailey.
19:40Now the bailey is where you would have found the soldiers' quarters, workshops, stables, various peasants,
19:46and, of course, animals for the kitchen.
19:48It's a very impressive set-up.
19:50And for hundreds of years, Trim Castle was impregnable.
19:54There's a real special thing about it is this keep.
19:57It's a completely unique plan and layout.
20:01The keep itself is more an exercise in geometry, really, than defence.
20:06The defence of the castle is really in its outer walls.
20:10But it's just a completely unique plan for the keep which makes it really special.
20:14A big, dramatic-looking keep in the middle of your castle,
20:18which was probably painted white or whitewashed, with these big galleries around it,
20:23fighting platforms at the top, and then red-tiled roof.
20:28So something like out of Disneyland, incredibly impressive,
20:31which you could have seen from all around here.
20:34What's interesting, I think, about Trim is that we're seeing this change in fortification
20:40at a very early date, and it shows you that ideas pass very quickly in the medieval world.
20:47People like Hugh de Lacey, who built Trim, are moving between England, Wales and France,
20:53maybe further afield.
20:54And so in one sense, Trim is at the forefront of castle design, I would think,
20:59in late 12th century Europe.
21:03Trim was the most impressive castle in the land, by a mile.
21:07It's one of the finest examples of an Anglo-Norman castle in all of Europe.
21:11Situated on the outer edge of the Pale, it became the administrative centre,
21:15the bastion of the English crown.
21:17And because of this, along with Dublin castle,
21:19it was constantly upgraded and refurbished to reflect its royal status.
21:24Well, this is the north side of the keep.
21:27Even on a sunny day, it's a cold side.
21:30So the tower that was here was a service tower.
21:33The other towers were for accommodation.
21:35In the keep, there's no well.
21:37And, of course, the castle has to have water.
21:39In times of siege, you need water.
21:41So right from the start, there's an ingenious system of gathering,
21:44all the water that comes off the roofs.
21:46It's fed through a series of ducts and pipes and into this north tower here.
21:51But the interesting thing about the tower, though, and the kitchens,
21:54is that we also found the waste from the actual kitchens as well,
21:57and from the table.
21:58And we have a fantastic collection of animal and bird bones from those kitchens.
22:03And, of course, there would have been great medieval feasts in here.
22:06I mean, they went to town on these big presentations on big occasions.
22:11And one of the things they actually would have done was they would have taken a swan,
22:14stuffed it with a goose, stuffed a goose with a pheasant, stuffed a pheasant with a duck,
22:18stuffed a dove, stuffed a dove with something else,
22:21and sometimes up to 12 different birds.
22:23And this is the sort of carry-on you get.
22:25But we had it all from over this side of the castle.
22:27We found all the bones, we sieved all the soil,
22:29and we found the smallest fish bones and bird bones,
22:32so we know exactly what they were eating.
22:34It was kind of hard to run a castle back in those days.
22:36I mean, you had the Lord, his knights, their squires,
22:40your missus, her maids, a couple of servants, priests.
22:43I mean, if they all turned up,
22:45after a couple of weeks of them all going to the toilet,
22:48down the chute into a ditch, the place would stink.
22:51I mean, really stink.
22:53So the Lord would say, ah, let's get out of here.
22:55And he'd head up the road to one of his other castles.
22:57The smell must have been absolutely horrendous
22:59in the middle of summer.
23:02So he might scoot off back to Dublin
23:04and get them to fumigate the place and clean it up,
23:06or go off to Drogheda, or go to Dorough,
23:09or go to Clonmacnois, or somewhere else,
23:12before it became befouled as well.
23:14So they moved around a fair amount,
23:17and he brought his retinue with them.
23:19It's different.
23:20You know, Ireland is a frontier society.
23:22Ireland is rough, essentially.
23:25I mean, it's difficult.
23:27I've come across many instances of women writing to the king
23:31to ask if they could essentially swap their Irish lands
23:34for some in England, because it's just too much trouble.
23:37So it is difficult.
23:39I mean, life in an Irish castle for a woman
23:41in the 12th and 13th centuries would not have been easy.
23:44There's very few creature comforts.
23:46It's a rough, soldierly kind of life.
23:51This is the only fireplace that they had for the first 20 years.
23:54The chimney, which is spiral, still in good condition.
23:56The mantel area has gone.
23:58Down to the grid, you can see the outline of the hearthstone.
24:00Now, these wall niches behind,
24:02these were part of the built-in furniture of the day.
24:04They were similar to a presser or a cupboard in today's terms.
24:07They were also used as wall lights,
24:09by placing candles inside in the niches
24:11and stretching a sheep's stomach upon a wooden frame across it
24:14as a lampshade for effect.
24:16Well, this is the original seat of the window.
24:21This is one of the windows of the Great Hall.
24:23You could have sat here.
24:24You would have a lovely big window.
24:26These big windows are only here on the riverward side of the castle
24:30because it's got a defence.
24:32It allowed you to swing either side and fire arrows.
24:37Very often, the crossbows were used here as opposed to longbows
24:40because they're easier to use in a small place like this.
24:43They were experts at building castles.
24:45I mean, even the stairs are well thought out.
24:47You see how they go around clockwise?
24:49You see, that gives the advantage
24:51to the right-handed swordsman coming from above
24:53because a right-handed swordsman coming from down here
24:56wouldn't be able to wiggle his weapon without hitting the centre post.
24:59You see, everything about these castles made them hard to take.
25:03But no Irishman, no native of this country
25:07would ever have attempted to try and get into Trim
25:10because it's too well defended.
25:11It just doesn't make sense.
25:14Trim Castle would be the centre of English power for decades.
25:18But beyond the pale, it was bandit country
25:20where the Irish lords still held sway.
25:23There is this feeling that somehow the Anglo-Normans came in,
25:26they came, they saw, they conquered.
25:28No, there's masses of the country.
25:30There's parts of the country you can't travel through
25:32if you're English because you will be attacked.
25:34Large parts of Ireland were not conquered
25:37and the native Irish lords were left in place.
25:41There's two, it's like two worlds.
25:43It's not an overall kind of uniform culture.
25:47It's two very distinct cultures side by side.
25:49They often clash.
25:55As the Normans settled in, life in Dublin returned to normal.
25:59Strongbow hadn't lasted very long.
26:01He died in Dublin in 1176.
26:03And power in the city settled down under the control of the crown.
26:07So as the Normans settled in then, Pat, into life in Dublin,
26:10what was it like back then for the Dubliners?
26:11Well, first of all, the Normans brought regulation into the city.
26:12A bit of order.
26:13A bit of order.
26:14And new charters, new laws come in from the King of England.
26:15The city expanded.
26:16The trade with England increased.
26:17It was actually a great place to be in.
26:18The population increased, except you had to be in the city.
26:20And what sort of population are we talking about now?
26:21Oh, it went up to around 10,000.
26:22So maybe it's a silly question, but obviously then what was the relationship like between
26:27the ordinary Dubliners and the people who populated the castle?
26:30Well, the ordinary Dubliner at this stage was really, if you're talking about the
26:35Irish, they were allowed to work here in the daytime, but not to sleep here at night time.
26:53They had to get out and go to places like Irishtown or Ringsend.
26:57They weren't trusted to be here at night time.
26:59This became an English city.
27:01It was Irish outside of the city.
27:03It was English inside the walls.
27:04The striking aspect of the Anglo-Norman settlement is the fact that the Gaelic-Irish were excluded
27:11from their legal code.
27:12So the Gaelic-Irish had no protection under the English common law.
27:16So you could kill an Irish man and not have to answer for it.
27:20So this obviously put Gaelic people within the common law area of influence at a severe disadvantage.
27:30Within the walls, the Anglo-Normans developed the city,
27:33built churches and handed over trade to the merchants from Bristol.
27:37But to keep control, they needed to update their timber fort.
27:41They had to build a castle here, but Dublin was a shambles.
27:45I mean, it was a small, pokey, dirty little town with wooden houses and smelly lanes.
27:50I mean, it took them years to requisition the lands alone, so they were never going to be able to build some massive structure like, say, Trim,
27:58with its impressive keep and its big curtain wall that measured over a quarter of a mile.
28:02Dublin Castle was always a dingy garrison.
28:05And it housed the sheriff, his troops and, of course, his tax collectors.
28:11Money was what it was all about, and Dublin became a cash cow for the English crown.
28:17Taxes went out of Ireland into the English Exchequer.
28:23So the activities of the English king was a constant drain on the manpower and wealth of the Anglo-Norman colony in Ireland.
28:32For example, there's a tax you pay when you get married, there's a tax you pay when you die.
28:36So there's a whole system designed, if they had towns in their lands, there's a lot of tolls that people would pay.
28:43In fact, throughout the Middle Ages, Ireland was a very coin-poor economy.
28:47There weren't a lot of coins in circulation simply because they were paid to London.
28:54It wouldn't be until King Henry's son, John, took over that Dublin Castle really prospered.
28:59But all around the country, castles were being built.
29:02There was money to be made with every opportunist trying to mark out his territory.
29:07Just eight years after Strongbow's invasion, that established the Anglo-Norman strongholds in Cork, Waterford, Wexford, Dublin and Trim.
29:16John de Courcy, who was a member of that garrison in Dublin, well, he decided to go on a bit of a solo run.
29:22So he decided to head north, and he arrived in Carrick, Fergus in 1177.
29:28So that was the perfect place to build a castle, wasn't it?
29:35John de Courcy built his castle at Carrick, Fergus, with commanding views of Belfast Lock.
29:41He did, however, build it without any permissions from the king.
29:45It was a perfect location, far enough from Dublin for a maverick knight to be able to assert his power,
29:51yet easily defended from both land and sea.
29:58As you were.
30:01So, Rory, in terms of what we can see in front of us today, and in terms of de Courcy, where did he start?
30:07Well, he came up, he was in the garrison in Dublin, and in 1177 he came up with 22 armed knights and 300 foot soldiers,
30:14and he carved out a semi-independent kingdom for himself in Ulster, and he based himself here in Carrick, Fergus.
30:19Well, at some point one of the military architects must have said to him,
30:22it's out in a rock, are you mad? Look, look at the coastline over there, build it over there.
30:27Well, de Courcy would have said to him, build it over where there's a natural spring,
30:30so that we have water all the year round if we're put under siege.
30:34The promontory that he's sitting on is easily defendable.
30:36It's on the coast, which means de Courcy could have kept in touch with both his father-in-law,
30:41who was the king of the Isle of Man, he was married to his daughter,
30:44and also to Cumbria, where he was from.
30:46So it was all very well chosen, and there's a natural harbour beside, as well,
30:50for boats to come in and supply if needs be.
30:52And you can see how impressive it looks, it would have been visible from land and sea for miles,
30:56you could have guards on top looking out, etc., and it would have been a real statement of power.
31:00He wasn't here for long, was he?
31:01He wasn't, he started admitting his own coins, he was known as Prince of Ulster,
31:05although he didn't have that official title, and he had basically a kingdom of his own,
31:09and King John started to get very annoyed with him, and he sent another Norman knight,
31:14Hugh de Lacey, up to get rid of de Courcy, and in 1205 de Courcy was expelled,
31:20and Hugh de Lacey took over.
31:22These fellas all just got notions themselves and said,
31:24I fancy a bit of this, and I'm going to build my own place.
31:26Well, they absolutely did, and up in County Antrim,
31:29which is quite far away from the centre of power in Dublin,
31:31you could carve out a kingdom, and once you'd subdued the local Irish,
31:35you could then do things like make your own coins and rule like a king.
31:39Once de Lacey took Carrickfergus and brought it back under the control of the crown,
31:47King John looked to extend his power west,
31:50and this time he would make sure that he called the shots from the start.
31:55Limerick was still a Viking, North-speaking town, up to the time that the Normans arrived,
32:11and if you were going to take the country, you needed to take the town.
32:16It's 1175 when the Normans first arrived.
32:19It's an important city to hold.
32:21I mean, if you have Limerick, you can control what's going on up and down the Shannon.
32:29Eventually, King John builds what's now known as King John's Castle.
32:36John never actually made it to Limerick, but it's called King John's Castle because it's a royal castle.
32:43It was built by royal decree, and it was a substantial castle.
32:48There was a large amount of money spent on it.
32:50We have a record of 12-11, 12-12 that about £700 was spent on the castle,
32:57and that is an absolutely colossal amount in those days, equivalent of a major piece of infrastructure today that might cost billions.
33:08John was a bit suspicious of a lot of his barons, and so rather than handing over Munster to his barons and letting them divvy it up amongst themselves,
33:21he actually created the centre of his own, in Limerick, so that he had a power base in the area as well.
33:28And I think that's why King John, you know, established the castle, because he was just simply afraid of the baron, his own barons going off on their own tack.
33:42Limerick Castle was another key centre, and it was established not as an isolated outpost, but as one of the biggest and most secure military bases in the whole country.
33:55And as well as building the castle, they developed Limerick into another one of Ireland's walled cities.
34:01Alongside Watford and Dublin, it developed a system of English laws and charters, all administered from within the imposing fortress of a castle.
34:14Well, the Anglo-Norman incursions into Ireland at the end of the 12th century and into the 13th went tremendously well.
34:21The mid-13th century saw the colony at the height of its power. It had sway over quite a lot of the island, you could say most.
34:32As the 13th century progressed, Ireland really became two separate countries.
34:36The so-called lands of peace, where the English were in control, and the lands of war, where the Irish still ran their own affairs.
34:43The knights who did strike out west survived by marrying into the local clans and going native.
34:49As you head west from, say, Dublin, once you go outside the pale area, it does become more Gaelic.
35:00It's not wholly Gaelic. There are always interactions with neighbouring Anglo-Norman families.
35:06But certainly, as you go into the west, as you cross the Shannon, the English influence will become a lot less pronounced.
35:14The Irish just seem to have gotten on with their traditional way of life.
35:23And if anything, rather than the Irish being drawn into the Anglo-Norman world, it was the Anglo-Normans who were drawn into the Irish world.
35:33On the banks of Loch Corrib, Ashford Castle is one of the most beautiful castles in Ireland.
35:41It was established by the Anglo-Norman knight, William de Burgo, who had been governor of Limerick before striking out west.
35:47Like many of the knights, he would marry well. His wife was the daughter of the King of Thomond.
35:52And this alliance allowed the de Burgos to become the most powerful family in Connacht.
35:57The de Burgos would have built their tower to watch over Loch Corrib and to protect themselves from the native O'Connor clan.
36:04Now the de Burgos were a proud family of knights from Wales who fought at the Battle of Hastings.
36:09So with their chain mail and archers, they quickly won the day here, becoming the ruling family of most of Connacht.
36:16And they established the walled town in Galway.
36:19But their allegiance to the crown was a little half-hearted.
36:23By the 14th century, they had become more Irish than the Irish themselves.
36:28I mean, it's all well and good, you know, standing here in the glorious sunshine, with protective gear all over you,
36:45on a breath of wind, shooting at a plastic target.
36:49But I'll tell you something, you're standing on the top of a keep with a 60-mile-an-hour horizontal wind
36:57and 300 fellas shooting arrows up at you, that's a different ballgame, isn't it?
37:03Apparently back in the day, if an archer was captured, it was a particularly gruesome thing that the enemy would do to them.
37:11Well, if they didn't chop off their heads, they would chop off their fingers so they couldn't pull back the...
37:18That's it, so that's the...
37:19So they were rendered useless.
37:20They were rendered useless.
37:21Tell me you got that one.
37:32With its gallery of colourful owners, Ashford Castle, now a five-star hotel, gives us a microcosm of 700 years of Irish history.
37:40In the 17th century, after 350 years under the de Burgos, the estate had passed to the Orinmore and Brown family,
37:48the descendants of the De Bruynes, who had helped with the initial conquering of Connacht and had built their castle in Galway.
37:55The Browns held on to Ashford Castle until 1852, when they were forced to sell up the greater part of their lands.
38:08Like a lot of landlords by that stage, they were hopelessly in debt.
38:12They had already been very extravagant, but the famine in the second half of the 1840s pushed them and a lot of other landlords over the edge
38:23because they weren't getting in any rents.
38:25So they had very little income, but they already had large debts to service.
38:29So this organisation called the Encumbered Estates Court was established.
38:35It was really the Narmer of its day, precisely to take over responsibility for these indebted estates and to sell them on.
38:43And at this period, you then had a man called Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, who was perhaps the greatest businessman of his era in charge of the Guinness brewery.
38:52And he was looking for an estate, a shooting estate in the west of Ireland, and it was in 1852 that he then discovered Ashford, Ashford House as it was called at the time, and bought that.
39:08It was Arthur Guinness who made the big changes on the house.
39:11In the fashion of the day, he employed the same architect as nearby Kylemore Abbey, which was built by another wealthy industrialist.
39:18Gothic Revival was in, and it made spectacular statements for wealthy men who wanted to be linked to the romance of the past.
39:27So, no longer for defence, what was once called Ashford House, now became Ashford Castle, smothering the original De Burgo Tower.
39:36Ashford Castle, well, that was just now for decoration.
39:41The Guinness family were renowned for both their good work in the area, as well as their famous shooting parties.
39:47Local man Martin Gibbons is the maitre d' and the third generation of his family to work in the castle.
39:54But, of course, your family association with the castle goes back...
39:58It goes back to my grandfather's time, and Martin Gibbons as well.
40:02He worked here in the early 1900s with the Guinnesses. He was a gamekeeper on the estate.
40:06Gamekeepers were, I was led to believe, they were gods in Guinness' eyes. They looked after the estate. They were shooting woodcock during the winter months with their parties and their guests at the house.
40:20And they came during the summer to fish. And this was just a country estate. Their main residence was in Dublin, as we all know.
40:26It's not bad, is it? No, not bad, is it?
40:27No, not bad. It's not a bad country pad to have.
40:29No, no, no. The last room the Guinness is built on was now our Prince of Wales cocktail bar. It was built for the visit of George V.
40:38We were here in 1905. So your grandfather would have been working here at that time?
40:42He worked here, yes.
40:44So he would have met?
40:45He would have met George V. He was on the shooting party when they shot at Balikine Woods, west of here near Clonbar.
40:53The estate at that time was 28,000 acres. It was all the land between Loch Corrup, which you have here, and Loch Masque, which is a mile north of here.
41:01And, of course, they would have came into, when the Guinnesses came up to the estate, they probably would have come into Galway, would they?
41:06They sailed south around the south coast into Galway Bay, left their boats there, and then they took their yachts from Galway to here.
41:15Must have been great times, like. Anywhere Guinnesses went, they left great monuments after them.
41:20So you had George V stay here, but in the latter part of the last century you had a very famous visitor as well, because a very famous piece of Irish history happened here.
41:29A very famous movie was shot in the area.
41:31That's right, in 1951.
41:33Yeah.
41:34Yes, in 1939, Ashford became a hotel.
41:36It was changed into a hotel by the Hugger family.
41:38And then in 1951, the film The Quiet Man was made here.
41:42John Ford director and Marian Harrah and John Wayne.
41:46Yes.
41:47Mr. Swagger himself.
41:48Did they stay in the hotel?
41:50They stayed for the six weeks, yes.
41:52Yes, yes.
41:53A story, a story that Marian Harrah, and she used to tell us the stories about John Ford and a ban on alcohol, filming in 1951.
42:01Did he really?
42:02He did, yes.
42:03Because Mr. Wayne liked a little...
42:04He'd drop, yes.
42:05Didn't he?
42:06Yeah.
42:07No drinking in the shoot?
42:08No drinking.
42:09For the entire shoot?
42:10Yes.
42:11He must have had a sneaky one.
42:12Do you honestly think did they adhere to that drinking ban for the six weeks?
42:15I don't think so.
42:16I don't think so either.
42:17I don't think so.
42:18It's still talked about today.
42:19No matter whether I work at breakfast or dinner in the evening.
42:22Somebody will always bring up some part of the film.
42:24By the middle of the 13th century, the Anglo-Normans had established their presence across large swathes of the country.
42:34Now, their control would be consolidated under the great earldoms, powerful dynasties of knights, who managed huge territories on behalf of the crown.
42:45And the richest and most powerful would be William Marshall, the greatest knight of all time,
42:51who, by marrying Isabel, daughter of Strongbow and Aoife, forged an alliance that would see the pair become the most powerful couple in the British Isles.
43:21So after that,
43:30Oh!
43:40It's not sex plotesis,
43:43Something's satisfying.