Читать книгу Irish Castles - Orna Mulcahy - Страница 15

HIGH STREET, CROOM, COUNTY LIMERICK

www.limerick.ie

Askeaton Castle stands on a small island in the river Deel in County Limerick. Started in 1199 and now a ruin, it was one of the castles of the Fitzgeralds, the Earls of Desmond, who arrived with the Norman invasion but who adopted the local language, laws, and culture to become “more Irish than the Irish themselves”, it was said. The Fitzgeralds ruled Munster from this castle for several centuries, until the English forces ate away at their support and drove them out in the late 1500s. The castle was destroyed by the forces of Cromwell in 1652, when it was defended by confederate Catholic forces.

The castle has a fine banqueting hall, with interesting architectural windows built above wine cellars and kitchens, testament to the importance of entertaining to the Irish nobility. Close by are two other ruins of interest: a fourteenth-century Franciscan friary founded by the Fitzgeralds, destroyed by an English commander in 1579 after failing to take the castle itself, and the 1740 Hellfire Club, where rich men were said to have gathered for entertainments and excesses of various kinds.