influence can still be seen
today in some of the town's place and family names. After the
Norman invasion, Wicklow was granted
to
Maurice FitzGerald
who set about building the 'Black
Castle', a land-facing fortification that lies ruined on the coast immediately
south of the harbour. The castle was briefly held by the local O'Byrne, the
O'Toole and Kavanagh clans
in the
uprising of 1641
but was quickly abandoned when English
troops approached the town. Sir Charles Coote, who led the troops is then
recorded as engaging in "savage and indiscriminate" slaughter of the
townspeople in an act of revenge.
Local
oral history contends that one of these acts of "wanton cruelty" was
the entrapment and deliberate burning to death of an unknown number of people
in a building in the town. Though no written account of this particular detail
of Coote's attack on Wicklow is available, a small lane way, locally referred to
as "Melancholy Lane", is said to have been where this event took
place.
Though the surrounding County of Wicklow is rich in bronze age monuments, the oldest surviving
settlement in the town is the Franciscan Abbey
(ruined). This is located at the west end
