Day 15
Mom found in her internet search, what is said to be the most beautiful town in Ireland. When we arrived there we thought, “What?!” It was just a regular town, there were flowers in pots along the street and fountains that were not going anymore. We figured that it would be more beautiful in the summer time. While here we did stop at an interesting looking church/monastery and looked around. It appeared that a school was in session inside so we enjoyed the outside and left.
We decided to not spend much time in this town, so we continued on to the next destination (we forget what it was), and Jack saw a sign for Bunratty castle. Mom headed to the castle, since we had not yet visited any, it was going to be our first castle. We purchased our tickets and headed in. They had a small replica village of what the common people lived like a the time of this castles power. They had it all set just so. In one house there was someone making butter, in another someone making bread, served with the butter that was being made in the butter house. There were chickens walking around, dogs, and pigs. After the village was the castle. There were not many visitors/tourists there which was nice. The builders had wisely designed and strongly built this castle. The huge gate that leads into the court yard, had a smaller door in the bottom center which was almost not visible from the outside. I had to really look to see it. For museum purposes they have it so you could open it and see what it was like. Bunratty castle has murder holes above the doors. For example, say an enemy got in as far as the door, they had people waiting with boiling water ready to dump on your head when you walked through the door. Most people did not survive very long after that because they were then thrown into prison. Bunratty was built where two rivers came together. That made it easy to defend. In it’s final siege, that is how the family escaped in the end, they got in boats at night and sneaked away.
Inside the castle in the basement, was a little room that they had set up with history about William Penn and the castle. The town that this castle is in is where William Penn grew up, he was born in this very castle. When we went through the first floor door, we had to decide if we were going to up the tower, or to the bedrooms and dinning room. We choose up, it was a spiral staircase, up to the top where we could look out over the land. Next we headed to see the bedrooms, which were just rooms with a fancy bed, dresser, mirror, chair, desk, and table. The huge servants dinning room was different. There was a door leading off it to the dungeon. That was very creepy. They had a red light on in the dungeon to show a scarecrow dressed up to be a man, with chains on his arms and feet. There was only one way to get into the dungeon which was to throw the person through the gate at the top to fall about 15 feet. There was no daylight in the dungeon. A sign said that most of the time when prisoners were thrown in they were injured and then eventually died. Rarely or never did prisoners come back out of the dungeon.
The servants dinning room was very large and roomy, with a very high celling. There was a really neat chair with carvings all over it that sat opposite the fireplace. That chair was not there many years ago, but the workers that work at the castle have reenact dinners. And they put the big fancy chair in there for the royalty. Many long heavy tables with benches filled the hall.
In the room above the servants dinning hall, is the royal dinning hall. At this time there is very little furniture in it, the museum curators have not been able to locate much of the original furniture which was all sold when the final residents were forced to sell everything and leave. There is one enormous chest or maybe you could call it a storage cabinet. It is intricately carved with all sorts of pictures and scenes.
Further in and behind are the royal private chambers which are more richly decorated than anywhere else. The celling in that room was green, red, and, white. It came down to points with leaves carved into balls painted gold on the tips. The long table was right in front of the big fire place, with padded chairs on each side. On the floor was a luxurious rug.
Bria and Mom walked up the gate house of a castle that was farther back it was on private land. Bria had a fun time exploring that gate house with mom, of about an hour. After they got back Bria, Landon, Jack, and I walked up to the reception house, and played fosse ball. There was also 2 play grounds, one at the top of the hill and one at the bottom of the hill. We spent a good amount of time down at the bottom one after dinner, because it had more to do than the one up the hill.
