Ireland’s Middle Kingdom or Midhe once stretched from the Shannon to the Irish Sea.
Created in the Iron Age as Ireland’s fifth province, it soon became the richest and most powerful of them all. For over a thousand years, meetings of the Irish kings and tribal leaders were held at the Hill of Tara, and many of the High Kings were chosen from the Middle Kingdom. After the Norman invasion of 1169, Henry II made the kingdom his royal province, renamed Meath and appointed Hugh de Lacy as his chief justiciar or deputy. Hugh de Lacy built his great castle at Trim as the central stronghold of Norman power. But over the next three centuries, Norman power was beaten back to “within the Pale” and in 1545 Henry VIII divided the royal province into east and west, abandoning Western Meath to the “unruly Irish”. Thirty years later, his daughter, Queen Elizabeth, divided Western Meath again into two counties, Westmeath and Longford. Most of the coastal part of Meath had already been divided off as Co. Louth.
