Barracks

The National Monuments Service's description

Aldborough House Barracks

 

A 19th-century barracks at Aldborough House was recorded in 2025 in the ‘Our Shared Built Military Heritage: The online mapping, inventorying and recording of the Army Barracks of Ireland, 1690-1921' a project that was funded by the North South Research Programme 2022-2024 and co-led by University College Dublin and The Open University' (Forbes and McGrath 2025).  The barracks was described in the inventory of the ‘Army Barracks of Ireland - Our Shared Military Heritage, 1690-1921’ as follows; ‘Aldborough House is a large Palladian mansion originally constructed in or around 1798 as a private residence and converted into a temporary barracks c.1812. It was intermittently used as a school and then as a permanent barracks from the 1840s. An infantry barracks, it had a capacity for seven officers, 276 infantrymen and four horses in 1867. It remained occupied by the army until 1895. There is a reference to ongoing negotiations to allow the police to occupy the barracks in 1896; however, there is no evidence that this occurred. By 1900 it was being used as a depot for the post office. In 1922, Aldborough House was occupied by the National Army during the Irish Civil War and used as a convalescence home for wounded soldiers. It remained a State property under the aegis of the Department of Posts and Telegraphs until it was sold into private ownership in 1999. No significant development has occurred on the site since then, except for emergency works after vandalism damaged the building. Currently abandoned but still extant, the gardens at the rear of the property have been redeveloped into local authority housing'.

 

Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien based on description taken from inventory of the ‘Army Barracks of Ireland - Our Shared Military Heritage, 1690-1921

 

Date of Compilation: 11 November 2025

References

Forbes, S. and McGrath, C. I. 2025  Army Barracks of Ireland, 1690–1921: Barracks Dataset and Supplementary Files (version 1.0). The Open University. Dataset.