Gatehouse

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 gate-house is in the NW corner of the bawn wall (DU023-014003-) enclosure. It has a base batter. The masonry of the bawn wall on the N side of the gate-house displays a series of building phases. It has aroundexternal arch and a pointedinternal arch with wicker centred vault . There is one chamber with a parapet level above it. This chamber is lit by a single light, cusped, ogee-headed, window in the S and a plain loop in the W wall. A lintelled doorway below a pointed arch survives in the NW corner and this provided access to the upper battlements with a projecting turret in the NW angle. There are stepped crenellations. An entrance off the passageway leads into what survives of an E wing. This was lit by rectangular opes. There are some brick-faced insertions. External stairs are present in the SE corner.
The site 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 1906, 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 gatehouse (DU023-014002-) belongs to a complex which includes a tower house (DU023-014001-) connected by a bawn wall (DU023-014003-), all built of coursed granite blocks.
Compiled by: Geraldine Stout and Padraig Clancy
Revised upload on: 22 May 2018

References

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

Ball, E.F. 1902-20 (Reprint 1979) A history of the County Dublin, 6 vols. Dublin. Gill and Macmillan.

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