Millmount Fort

The great mound on the south bank of the Boyne was first fortified in historical times by the invading Normans, who raised a motte and bailey on what was probably an older Neolithic passage grave of the Newgrange kind. In Irish cosmology the mound is often assumed to be the burial place of Amhairgin mac Míled, whose name — "Amhair", singing, and "gin", give birth — marked him in myth as the originator of song, poetry and music. The shamanistic verse he is said to have uttered on entering Ireland by the Boyne, "The Song of Amhairgin", was conventionally reckoned the first Irish poem.

Hugh de Lacy, one of the Normans who came to Ireland after Strongbow, built the original fort around 1172, having been granted the Kingdom of Meath by Henry II. A stone castle was raised on the site later.

That stone castle formed part of the town's defences during the siege of Drogheda in the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in 1649. The fort's English defenders attempted to surrender to the Parliamentarian troops under Oliver Cromwell. They were massacred when they gave themselves up on 11 September 1649.

The complex was later called Richmond Barracks, and some of the buildings standing in its courtyard were put up around 1714. After the unrest and rebellions of the 1790s and the Act of Union in 1800 the complex was re-fortified and the present tower built — the Martello tower that Drogheda people call "The Cup and Saucer".

Anti-Treaty forces occupied Millmount during the Irish Civil War. On 4 July 1922 it became the target of shelling by the army of the Irish Free State. The Free State forces under Michael Collins had been given extensive support by the British Army at the express wish of Winston Churchill, who insisted that the Republican forces be crushed.

The piece turned on the fort was the same British Army 18-pounder that had shelled the Republican headquarters at the Four Courts in Dublin some days earlier. The bombardment ran for several hours before the Republican garrison retreated. The Martello tower was shelled and all but destroyed, and the fort suffered considerable damage.

The fort was restored in 2000 and opened to the public as a military museum. The whole complex is a national monument and has been designated as Drogheda's Cultural Quarter.

The Millmount Museum holds artefacts of local and national importance, chief among them a collection of guild and trade banners that Ireland's National Museum recognises as of special significance and that includes the only remaining guild banners in Ireland. Its other exhibits include an authentic 18th-century Irish folk kitchen, dairy and laundry, and an Irish History Room covering the major events of the country's past.