Castle - tower house

The National Monuments Service's description

Situated to the SE of the junction of Monkstown Avenue and Mounttown Road Upper the site is located in grassland on the road edge. The tower house is in the SW corner of the bawn wall and projects beyond it towards the road edge. It is three storeys in height with a parapet level containing two upper battlements. In the NE corner of the N wall in an inserted doorway. The doorway opens onto a spiral stairs, under the stairs is an arched recess with shows signs of wicker-centring. The original entrance in the E wall is blocked but has a semi-elliptical head.
The ground floor (Dims. L8.7m; Wth 5.1m) is lit by a slit ope in the N wall. First floor is entered through a lintelled granite doorway with dressed limestone jambs. This door is rebated with bar holes present. Interiors of first and second floors are lit by slit opes. Corbels project from the E wall on the second floor. The parapet level contains two caphouses, stepped crenellations and a wall-walk. There is a dripstone and guttering present. W section of tower lies beyond the bawn wall and is not tied into it. In the NE corner of the tower house there are chamfered limestone jambs from another building re-used as quoins (Healy 1975, 1-19; Turner 1983, 82; Harbison 1970, 79).
The tower house was associated with the Cistercian grange of St Mary's Abbey. After the dissolution in the sixteenth century the lands at Monkstown were given to Sir John Travers, Master of the Ordnance of Ireland. Walter Cheevers had it in 1641, then Ludlow Cromwell, Master of the House, who is said to have repaired the castle and laid out the gardens (Ball 1902, I, 1-12). A drawing by Beranger dated 1766 shows two towers placed either end of a courtyard flanked by a multi-chimneyed mansion on the one side and a show wall on the other (Harbison 1998, 60-1).
The tower house (DU023-014001-) belongs to a complex which includes a gatehouse (DU023-014002-) connected by a bawn wall (DU023-014003-), all built of coursed granite blocks.
This monument is subject to a preservation order made under the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014 (PO no. 189/1951).
Compiled by: Geraldine Stout and Padraig Clancy
Revised upload on: 22 May 2018

References

Turner, M.K. 1979 Rathmichael: a parish in the Pale. Dublin Historical Record 32, 82-93.

Harbison, P. 1998 Beranger's antique buildings of Ireland. Dublin. Four Courts Press in association with the National Library of Ireland.

Ball, E.F. 1902 Rathmichael and its neighbourhood. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 32, 113-27.

Healy, P. 1975b Third report on monuments and sites of archaeological interest in county Dublin. An Foras Forbartha, Dublin.

Harbison, P. 1970 (Reprint 1992) Guide to the national monuments in the Republic of Ireland. Dublin. Gill and Macmillan.