Hinterland {{Historical populations|state=collapsed The town is situated in an area which contains a number of archaeological monuments dating from the Neolithic period onwards, of which the large
passage tombs of
Newgrange,
Knowth, and
Dowth are probably the best known. The density of archaeological sites of the prehistoric and early Christian periods uncovered in the course of ongoing developments, (including during construction of the Northern Motorway or 'Drogheda Bypass'), has shown that the hinterland of Drogheda has been a settled landscape for millennia.
Town beginnings . Despite local tradition linking
Millmount to
Amergin Glúingel, in his 1978 study of the history and archaeology of the town, John Bradley stated that "neither the documentary nor the archaeological evidence indicates that there was any settlement at the town prior to the coming of the Normans". The results of a number of often large-scale excavations carried out within the area of the medieval town appear to confirm this statement. One of the earliest structures in the town is the
motte-and-bailey castle, now known as
Millmount Fort, which overlooks the town from a bluff on the south bank of the Boyne and which was probably erected by the
Norman Lord of Meath,
Hugh de Lacy, sometime before 1186. The wall on the east side of Rosemary Lane, a back-lane which runs from St. Laurence Street towards the Augustinian Church, is the oldest stone structure in Drogheda. It was completed in 1234 as the west wall of the first castle guarding access to the northern crossing point of the Boyne. A later castle, circa 1600, called ''Laundy's Castle'' stood at the junction of West Street and Peter's Street. On Meathside, the
Castle of Drogheda or
The Castle of Comfort was a tower house castle on the south side of the Bull Ring. It served as a prison, and as a sitting of the Irish parliament in 1494. The earliest known town charter is that granted to Drogheda-in-Meath by Walter de Lacy in 1194. In the 1600s, the name of the town was also spelled "Tredagh" in keeping with the common pronunciation, as documented by
Gerard Boate in his work ''Irelands' Natural History
. In c.'' 1655 it was spelled "Droghedagh" on a map by William Farriland. Drogheda was an important walled town in the
English Pale in the medieval period. It frequently hosted meetings of the
Irish Parliament at that time. According to
R.J. Mitchell in
John Tiptoft, Earl of Worcester, in a spill-over from the
War of the Roses the
Earl of Desmond and his two youngest sons (still children) were executed there on Valentine's Day 1468 on orders of the
Earl of Worcester, the
Lord Deputy of Ireland. It later came to light (for example in Robert Fabyan's
The New Chronicles of England and France), that
Elizabeth Woodville, the queen consort, was implicated in the orders given. The parliament was moved to the town in 1494 and passed
Poynings' Law, the most significant legislation in Irish history, a year later. This effectively subordinated the Irish Parliament's
legislative powers to the King and his
English Council.
Later events The town was
besieged twice during the
Irish Confederate Wars. In the second
siege of Drogheda, an assault was made on the town from the south, the tall walls breached, and the town was taken by
Oliver Cromwell on 11 September 1649, as part of the
Cromwellian conquest of Ireland and it was the site of a
massacre of the
Royalist defenders. In Cromwell's own words after the siege of Drogheda, "When they submitted, their officers were knocked on the head, and
every tenth man of the soldiers killed and the rest shipped to
Barbados." In 1661,
Henry Moore, 3rd Viscount Moore was created the
Earl of Drogheda in the
Peerage of Ireland. The
Battle of the Boyne, 1690, occurred some west of the town, on the banks of the
River Boyne, at Oldbridge.
The Tholsel in West Street was completed in 1770. In 1790, Drogheda Harbour Commissioners were established by the
Port of Drogheda Act 1790. They remained in place until 1997 when a commercial enterprise, the Drogheda Port Company, replaced them. In 1825, the
Drogheda Steam Packet Company was formed in the town, providing shipping services to
Liverpool. In 1837, the population of Drogheda area was 17,365 people, of whom 15,138 lived in the town.
Town arms Drogheda's coat of arms features
St. Laurence's Gate with three lions, and a ship emerging from either side of the
barbican. It is
blazoned as
Azure per pale dimidiated, on the dexter side three lions passant guardant in pale or, on the sinister as many hulls of ships in pale of the last, surmounted by a castle with two towers triple-towered argent. The town's motto translates as "God our strength, merchandise our glory". The
star and crescent emblem in the crest of the coat of arms is mentioned as part of the mayor's seal by
D'Alton (1844). In 2010, Irish president
Mary McAleese, in a speech delivered during an official visit to
Turkey, stated that the star and crescent had been added in the aftermath of the
Great Famine as gratitude for food supplies donated by the
Ottoman Sultan
Abdülmecid I, which had arrived at Drogheda by ship.
20th century In 1921, the preserved severed head of
Saint Oliver Plunkett, who was executed in London in 1681, was put on display in
St. Peter's (Catholic) Church, where it remains today. The church is located on West Street, which is the main street in the town. In 1979,
Pope John Paul II visited Drogheda as part of his
five-stop tour of Ireland. He arrived less than a month after the IRA assassination of
Lord Mountbatten,
Queen Elizabeth's cousin, in
Mullaghmore. On 29 September 1979, he arrived in Dublin, where he gave his first mass. He then addressed 300,000 people in Drogheda, where he appealed "on his knees" to paramilitaries to end the
violence in Ireland: "Now I wish to speak to all men and women engaged in violence. I appeal to you, in language of passionate pleading. On my knees I beg you to turn away from the paths of violence and to return to the ways of peace. You may claim to seek justice. I too believe in justice and seek justice. But violence only delays the day of justice. Violence destroys the work of justice. Further violence in Ireland will only drag down to ruin the land you claim to love and the values you claim to cherish."
21st century Two decades into the 21st century some of the historic core of Drogheda town has suffered urban decline. Some of the buildings have been derelict for some years and are in danger of collapse. There was a 2006 traffic plan for pedestrianisation of West Street. It was rejected at a vote of the elected councillors. They had come under pressure from traders in the area concerned about a potential further decline in customer footfall. But the issue has come up for debate again in 2020. When asked, Drogheda residents point out that a combination of expensive car-parking and high commercial rates had a push-pull effect on the town's centre. Shops were forced to close and at the same time shoppers brought their business to retail parks such as the Boyne Shopping Centre on Bolton Street. A substantial root-and-branch approach to renewal of the locality was proposed in "Westgate Vision: A Townscape Recovery Guide", published in 2018, in which the area surrounding Narrow West Street was to be subject to a 10-year regeneration by Louth County Council. ==Demographics==