page_title: Carrickmines Castle
section_title: M50 motorway and "The Carrickminders"
hierarchical_section_title: Carrickmines Castle / M50 motorway and "The Carrickminders"
caption_attribution_description: English: Water feature uncovered by the archaeological dig at Carrickmines
context_page_description: Carrickmines Castle is an archaeological site in Carrickmines, County Dublin, in eastern Ireland. The castle was built in the Middle Ages to protect the English-ruled Pale around Dublin. The mostly subsurface ruins lay in the path of the M50 Motorway, completed in 2005. Sections of the medieval walls and some sections of the castle's defensive structures were preserved within or under M50 roundabouts.
context_section_description: The ruins of the castle were the subject of a long running dispute before the M50 motorway was built through the site of the castle. It began in 2002 when activists, including Vincent Salafia and Gordon Lucas, who called themselves the "Carrickminders" camped out on the castle's ruins to prevent them being removed to make way for the motorway. They were joined by preservationists, including Professor Sean Duffy, Head of the Department of History at Trinity College Dublin and Dr. Mark Clinton, who was the archaeologist employed by the National Roads Authority as Site Director. They argued that the site's potential for historical study had not been fully realised. They questioned why the line of the M50 rerouted through the castle in 1998 when the proposed new road was originally routed around it in 1983 on the advice of a state agency.
  In 2005 both the M50 motorway and the junction were completed.
caption: The site prior to the building of the M50.
exif: {"Image ImageDescription": "OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA", "Image Make": "OLYMPUS OPTICAL CO.,LTD", "Image Model": "C2Z,D520Z,C220Z", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "144", "Image YResolution": "144", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "ACD Systems Digital Imaging", "Image DateTime": "2007:04:17 22:06:44", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Centered", "Image ExifOffset": "283", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1564", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "10201", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/60", "EXIF FNumber": "8", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "80", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0220", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2003:12:29 01:14:41", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2003:12:29 01:14:41", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MaxApertureValue": "3", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash did not fire", "EXIF FocalLength": "5", "EXIF SubSecTime": "796", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1598", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "974", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "1492", "EXIF FileSource": "Digital Camera"}