What is this ancient historic Irish building dating back to 1736??
Can you guess what this is??
We are very lucky to have this site within the allowable travel restriction distance of 5km here in Ireland. We hiked up here with our 3 sons on the sunniest day of the year so far in Ireland in 2021. It allowed for me to take these photos with the sun giving a nice backdrop.
The structure itself is really cool and i was curious what purpose it served back in the day. So I wondered how I might figure it out.
It looked like the remains of a monastic development, like a round tower which was common in those bygone times.
After some searching online, I found out that it was in fact an old Windmill that was first built in on Holtrass hill in Garristown in 1736 and other windmills were built nearby from 1607.
It's an old windmill
The windmill remains sit proudly atop an ancient hill-fort like that at nearby Tara.
The views from up here are simply breath taking. You can see right across Leinster, as well as up to the Mourne Mountains in the North, the Hill of Tara to the west, Dublin and Wicklow mountains to the south and Howth and Dublin Bay in the east.
small windows
These small windows were what made me think it was a round tower before I looked it up.
A plaque
This plaque was fixed here in 1736!! To put that into context, this was 40 years before the United States was founded. So it's fair to say it's pretty damn old!
The windmill's Baaaaa'd neighbours
It sits in a farmers field now sharing its space with many ambling sheep and their lambs, which the boys were very excited about.
Fun chasing bubbles
Here they are enjoying the sunshine, while chasing bubbles around the field. Their carefree happy faces are a joy to watch.
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If you enjoyed this post and would like to see more similar posts about historic sites in Ireland or anything else about Ireland or music or Astronomy or whatever, let me know and I'd be happy to make a post for you on the subject.
All photos are my own taken with a Samsung A40 smartphone and are unedited raw original images
