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DONORE AND DULEEK |
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A couple of miles southwest of Drogheda, DONORE 's chief interest,
apart from having been King James's base at the time of the Battle of
the Boyne, lies in its ten-pound castle . In 1429 Henry VI promised a
grant of £10 to every one of his subjects who, in the next ten years,
built a castle 20ft long, 16ft wide and 40ft high within the counties of
Meath, Louth, Kildare and Dublin - the area known as the Pale (the tract
of land around Dublin under English control). The three-storey castle
here is built almost exactly to these measurements, though unfortunately
it seems to be permanently locked up.
DULEEK ( An Damh Liag , "The Stone Church"), a few miles further south,
on the River Nanny, is an historic little place of considerably more
interest. The south-of-the-Boyne equivalent of Kells, it was founded by
St Patrick who settled St Ciaran here to build the first stone church in
Ireland and found a monastic settlement; it was also an early bishopric.
Much later, the Jacobite forces withdrew to Duleek after the Battle of
the Boyne and spent the night here, while James himself fled to Dublin
and then on to France. The ruined St Mary's Priory you see today was
probably founded in the twelfth century, and was abandoned after Henry
VIII's dissolution of the monasteries: there are some fine tombs in the
roofless building, and nearby a squat, tenth-century high cross . In the
town square is a wayside cross of a different nature, erected by Genet
de Bathe in 1601 as a memorial to William, one of her husbands, and one
of the finest examples of a type of cross that crops up all over the
place.
Good, reasonably priced B&B accommodation and home-produced food are
available at the historic house of Annesbrook, a short, well-signposted
distance out of town (closed Oct-April; tel 041/982 3293,
hugh.mce@oceanfree.net ; £40-55/¬50.79-69.84). William Thackeray in his
Irish Sketchbook (1842) wrote uninspiringly about Annesbrook, but its
most striking asset, the Ionic pedimented portico, has an interesting
tale attached. The stately entrance is said to have been hastily affixed
onto the box-shaped house when its owner was told to expect a visit from
George IV, the first king to arrive from England after the departure of
William and James. The portico was felt a necessary addition to bring
the house up to the standards expected by royalty. The north wing,
housing a Gothic dining room, was also built in the king's honour, but
he preferred to dine in the garden.
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