The Trim Castle - the castle where part of “The Braveheart” was made.
When we learnt about this fact about the Trim castle, we were very surprised. But after searching in Irish travel guides we found out that this choice was not random. It turned out that the Trim Castle is the largest English Norman castle in Europe. At that, it’s quite well preserved for its age (XII century).
But, to be honest, for shooting the movie, they built wooden fortifications upon walls and towers of the castle; you can see them while watching the above-mentioned movie. The Trim castle “played a role” of York Castle in the movie. Photo albums about shooting “The Braveheart” in the Trim Castle are available while buying tickets to the castle.
Now we would like to share our impressions about the Trim Castle how we saw it. Unfortunately, it turned out to be quite destroyed (Cromwell troops and time did their best). Of course, it’s not as destroyed as the Dunluce Castle, but the vellums are damaged for more than two-thirds.
Only the inner fortress, called donjon or the keep, is well preserved thanks to the strongest walls, their thickness is up to 3 meters. It is interesting that the inner dividing wall has almost the same thickness as the outer one. Actually, the whole tour with a guide is along the inner fortress of the Trim Castle.
By the way, when the guide announced that the excursion will take 45 minutes and locked the door with a huge key, we were not happy to have such a long excursion. But the guide’s story was so interesting that the time just flashed by.
We learnt so much about life of a medieval castle, that even we, who studied history, had something to add to our historical knowledge. For example, we knew how toilet rooms were organized in castles and what wardrobes were needed for in Middle Ages.
During the whole excursion around the castle, a thought didn’t leave us, the thought about how far humanity has advanced and how we have become victims of civilization. Just imagine that tenants of an “elite” house, a medieval castle, didn’t have a fireplace in all rooms of their castle. So, how simple did people lived outside the castle…?!
Another thing which astonished us so much was their great knowledge of fortification and construction; they could build such a huge three-level dominion, and the strong walls of the castle. The fact is that the castle, as it looks now, was built already in 1220, it’s almost 800 years ago! And people didn’t have cranes, stone dressing machines and that sort of things. It’s such a pity that the Trim Castle is not preserved as well as its age mate, the Malahide Castle.
