Wicklow

Wicklow stands on Ireland's eastern shore where a harbour opens toward the Irish Sea. Settlement here reaches back to the Viking age, and after the Anglo-Norman conquest a fortress known as the Black Castle was raised above the coast. It became a focus of struggles between English authorities and neighbouring Gaelic families. During the upheavals of the 1640s the castle changed hands and was pulled down in 1646. It was later rebuilt, though a hearth-tax record of 1668 described it as unoccupied, a reminder of the unsettled decades through which the town had passed.