Battles of the Boyne

Today we were in full battle mode in Boyne Valley Activities. It was all hands on deck as we had a few trips downriver to organise. First on the agenda was our Boyne Valley Landscape Tour. Seeing as today is July 12, we had to stop at Rossnaree Ford and rest for a while to take in the surroundings. This was the site of not one, but two decisive battles in Irish history.
The first battle of the boyne is mentioned in the Tain Bo Cualigne and it involved the shamed King of Ulster marching on Tara after Queen Maeve stole his prize bull. Legend has it that Rossnaree Ford is where the main confrontation took place. This makes sense. In the age before maps and roads, people used the landscape features to mark out boundaries, and the Boyne has always divided the North and South in Ireland. The King of Tara lost his head here, courtesy of some fancy spear work from Cu Chulainn who ran across the ford to win the battle.

Williamites vs Jacobites

Jump ahead 2000 years and you have another army marching on the south from Ulster. This battle in 1690 involved soldiers from all over Europe. It was fought between William and his father-in-law James for control of Europe. It was the largest battle ever fought on Irish soil and the fields around here still throw up military artifacts. Instead of spears, this time they used muskets and cannons. In this hot weather, with the water levels extremely low, you can see how General Schomberg would have chosen this spot to cross and flank the Jacobite troops. They met at a boggy ravine at Sheepgrange and stood facing each other, unable to advance. Meanwhile William took his chance and crossed at Oldbridge. This was the last time that kings faced each other on the battle field. After that they left it to the poor soldiers to do the fighting on their behalf.

In the afternoon, we had another medieval river tour of Trim. After a quick walk around the deserted ruins of SS Peter & Paul we hopped back into the kayaks and  finished off at the Priory of St John the Baptist. This 13th century hospital had its main keep added later as a private residence. After the Battle of the Boyne, King William confiscated the building and granted it to one of his soldiers. This was common practise throughout the valley and it had a big impact on land ownership. In this case, the soldier did not stay. It is recorded that he spent one night in the residence and had such nightmares that he left the very next day. Hopefully our tourist amenities are a bit more welcoming nowadays.

Hospital of St John the Baptist, Newtown

Finally, we got suited and booted for the late afternoons activities. We had a paintball battle starting at our new course in the centre of the town. After all that talk of ancient history we were in the mood for a bit of action and there is nothing like running about the place shooting at each other with paint pellets to get a full understanding of historical warfare.
Who won this battle? Like most battles, it depends who you ask. It is still being disputed in a beer garden somewhere.

History being made

Game of Ruins

After the success of our Float through Time Historical River Tour (Slane to Newgrange) we wondered if we could do a similar job on our homebase in Trim. At first we were unsure. Trim Castle overshadows everything in the town and there is already a tour running in there, which we highly recommend. However, we had the same concern with Newgrange and there turned out to be a whole lot more to Bru na Boinne than one monument, so we pressed on.

We also had the added disadvantage of growing up here. We tend to walk past stone ruins and think of them as places to walk through on the way somewhere else. This is something that only a Trim-head can understand. While tourists stop and photograph everything, we just carry on.
Our Newgrange tour covers about 6000 years through a World Heritage landscape, so there is no shortage of stories and monuments to show and tell there. The majority of the features in Trim are from the medieval period,  from about 450AD to 1600AD.  During that period they had wheels and money and even America. To prehistorians like us, that is practically last week.
So we had to dig deep to find the story. Luckily there were plenty of excavation reports. During the boom years, archaeology in Trim multiplied tenfold compared to previous decades, so the picture most of us have of the town is often based on old ideas. Yes, there were knights and lords and saints, and they have a habit of hogging the headlines of the historical records with their big decisions and battles and treaties. However, the real story is the town itself, how it changed from a highly sophisticated multi-ethnic society into a radical experiment in community self-government that appeared in pockets of feudal Europe during the middle ages. Throw in a few hundred years of competition between different groups of religious folk and the place starts to become like something out of Game of Thrones. While there are no record of dragons in Trim, it was definitely the place to be if you fancied an interesting life.

Give us a shout if you fancy learning more.

The Trim Incident

This weekend in 1920 was busier than normal in Trim.
The War of Independence was in full swing and the IRA were concentrating on attacking RIC barracks. The Royal Irish Constabulory were the main method of control in Ireland by the British government at the time and the barracks in Trim was a formidable establishment. It had over 20 men stationed there and contained guns, ammunition and grenades. It was located in what is now the Castle Arch Hotel and it had walls and steel gates that were over 15ft high.

The Meath IRA hatched a plan to attack the barracks on Sunday because they knew that half of them would be gone to mass. The IRA was very active in this area and one of the Lalor brothers had already single handedly attacked a truckload of soldiers at the Wellington monument
They blocked off the roads to Trim, captured the constables in the church and attacked the barracks. Only one constable tried to stop them and he was shot in the lung. Then the building was burned down using oil that they brought with them. The IRA escaped and went into hiding. One of them was said to have hid in a freshly dug grave.

They had to hide because they knew that the Black and Tans would arrive soon. The British government had a strategy for dealing with guerilla warfare since the Boer War. Reprisals. Four lorries of Black and Tans arrived and shot into a crowd hurling on the fair green, injuring two boys, George Griffen and James Kelly. The local priest and town leaders intervened and pleaded with the auxillaries not to take it out on the town. They drove off but returned in the early hours of the morning. This is when the madness started.
Witnesses say that the town was left looking like something from the war-fields of France. A quarter of the buildings were burned, including J&E Smyths, right beside where our premises are now located, and the town hall with all the town records. Soldiers waved grenades in front of windows where children hid. For years afterwards, children were forbidden to play with toy guns in the street because so many of them were traumatised. Many of the townsfolk left their homes and hid down by the river, rather than suffer the reprisals.

The looting and burning by the Black and Tans was reported in the New York Times and on the British Pathe newsreel. It had two significant consequences. The IRA in Meath became the centre of the Eastern force in Ireland, and General Crozier, the leader of the Auxillary British Forces, was forced to resign over the actions of his forces in what was called the Trim Incident.After the War of Independence, quite a few of the volunteers that took part on the raid of the RIC barracks went on to join the newly formed police force, An Garda Siochana

A river runs through it

Trim is a bit of an historical town.
People have been coming here for donkeys' years and they all arrive because of the river - the Boyne. About 8000 years ago, mesolithic hunter-gatherers used the river to navigate through the dense forests of Ireland. It was the only way to get around. They followed the salmon in season and camped along the clearings that the Boyne created, leaving their stone tools for archaeologists to find later on.
About 5000BC, agriculturalists arrived in the Boyne Valley and began to clear away the trees so they could see the land. They settled down, tended their crops and stored food for the winter months. This was the beginning of civilisation in Ireland. The Neolithic people built the huge ceremonial passage tombs that can be seen from the river, placing their ancestors in them and marking the territory as owners of the land. This was also the period when people began to look to the heavens. The name of the Boyne comes from the Gaelic for the white cow - the Milky Way. To the first farmers, the Boyne was a mirror of the stars that seemed to flow across the night sky. No wonder they constructed Bru na Boinne to take the calendar and the movement of the stars into account.

Being Ireland, we also have a legend for how the Boyne was created, just in case the facts are too dull. There was a queen called Boanne who was forbidden from going near the magic Well of Knowledge in Kildare, but curiosity eventually got the better of her. When she approached the well, the waters got agitated and exploded, driving her the whole way to the sea where she drowned. That is also how the famous Salmon of Knowledge came to be swimming around beneath the water until Fionn MacCumhaill got his hands on it.

Trim was one of the few spots of the river where it was possible to cross from one side to the other. The Irish name for the town translates as a river crossing point. We take bridges for granted nowadays, but back then a crossing point was the only way of getting from A to B without going all the way round to Z first. This meant that it was hotspot for people on the move.

The Christians arrived in Trim by way of the Boyne. Lomman, St Patrick's nephew and the founder of the town, arrived by boat. He converted the Gaelic chiefs here and gained control of the crossing point. The river was crucial for the trade between religious centres in Europe and it would have been very important for feeding the population that gathered around the place. Water-mills lined the banks and the town would have been busy with boats and fishermen. When the Normans arrived in Ireland, they recognised the value of Trim and the Boyne. They rented land off the church and built their great stone castle here, ensuring that the Boyne continued to be navigable so that they could import their goods around Europe. These strong links attracted religious orders like the Franciscians and Benedictines, whose abbey ruins can be viewed all along the river.

                                            
 The Boyne is still the life-force of the town. People come and go but the river just rolls along, at times quiet and relaxing and at times wild and exciting. Nowadays the Boyne is used mostly for recreation rather than trade and navigation. Boyne Valley Activities have sit-on kayaks, Canadian canoes and certified paddlers who offer different activities tailor-made to suit your needs. We specialise in river-trips. We are passionate about the landscape of the Boyne Valley, whether it is the river itself, the history or the many activities to be had around the place. We want to make your stay as good as ours.
Get in touch.