The Normans

Two hundred years later the Norman French arrived, descended from Ireland's former marauders, the Vikings. They came at the behest of the English king, Henry II, in 1171 on invitation by the disgraced King of Leinster, Dairmuid Mac Murrough. And through the process of incastellation - the policy of construction, not destruction - subjugated three-fourths of the country in 70 years.

Under Richard, Earl of Pembroke, surnamed Strongbow, the lands of Leixlip were granted to Adam de Hereford where he began construction of Leixlip Castle in 1172. The castle was built as an outpost of The Pale on a rock at the confluence of the two rivers. Henry's son, John, Richard The Lionheart's brother, when Prince and Lord of Ireland, is supposed to have stayed at the castle in 1185. This was the time of The Crusades and the feint outline of a skull and crossbones on the Southeast corner of St. Mary's church nearby bears testimony to the times.

The Norman's built strong stone buildings with wooden roofs which were not immune to warfare and fire. As a military occupation outpost the castle and neighbouring settlement buildings came under attack. St. Mary's was destroyed when the King of Scotland, Robert Bruce, and his brother, Edward, invaded Ireland (1315 - 1318) and attacked Leixlip Castle. For four days the castle withstood the onslaught before the Bruces retreated leaving the church in flames. Only the stout tower survived intact. For 335 years the church remained derelict. The turbulence of the times was reflected politically. Granted to the Eighth Earl of Kildare, taken from the Tenth Earl, the rebel Silken Thomas, and restored to the Eleventh Earl, Leixlip's fortunes were tied to the Norman-Anglo-Irish FitzGeralds. Beginning with Strongbow, who took an Irish wife on the battlefield, the policy of intermarriage between foreigner and native created a new group within society with different allegiances. The FitzGeralds became the Sean Ghalls - the New Irish. Based at Maynooth, the Geraldines of Kildare held the entire county with parts of Meath, Dublin and Carlow, while their castles stretched to the west coast, from the coast of Down to Adare outside Limerick.

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