THE YELLOW STEEPLE IN TRIM COUNTY MEATH

THE YELLOW STEEPLE IN TRIM COUNTY MEATH [NOVEMBER 2013]

I have tried a number of times to get some good photographs of this old structure but every time I visited the weather was really bad. Most times I visited the weather was wet and stormy and as such was not suitable for photography. This timed it was a beautiful day - warm and sunny.

Just north-west of the St Mary’s Abbey building is a 40m Yellow Steeple close to Trim Castle. Originally it was the bell tower of the abbey, dating from 1368. Unfortunately it was badly damaged by Cromwell’s soldiers in 1649.

The tower, constructed of punched and squared lime stone, served as the abbey’s bell tower. The tower still retains the remnant of a spiral staircase, which was built without a newel. The eastern wall rises seven storeys and the southern wall reaches five, but little to nothing remains of the other sides of the formerly square tower. The eastern wall retains two clasping corner buttresses. The walls are mostly plain with a few windows and other simple decoration. The most elaborate feature is the double-pointed belfry window underneath a flower-let formed by a tracery pattern. The south wall is partly built of rubble suggesting that it was an interior wall. There are signs that a tall pointed object, such as a funerary monument, was connected to the south wall. The abbey church most likely was connected to the tower from the south.

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