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Sites and Monuments Record · Ireland

Castle - motte

Ballyshannon Demesne, County Kildare, Ireland

Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915) covering the location of Castle - motte, Ballyshannon Demesne, County Kildare, with a pin at the register's coordinates
Ordnance Survey six-inch map, 2nd edition (1888–1915), covering this location. Courtesy of the National Library of Scotland. The pin is ours, placed from the register's coordinates.

The record

Townland
Ballyshannon Demesne
County
Kildare
Country
Ireland
First-edition OS map
Indicated
Latest-edition OS map
Tumulus
Coordinates
53.08642, -6.82512
SMR number
KD028-058001-

Slide toward Today to fade the historical sheet and see the modern map underneath.

David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries

4 historical maps cover this location, the earliest the 1790 map "Composite: Ireland." (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries).

Historical maps covering this location

  • 1790 · Composite: Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1799 · Ireland. (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1830 · V.3:11-15:XV. Britisches Reich. C. Kon: Ireland. a. Prov: Leinster. Counties: 1-12 (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)
  • 1891 · Ireland 16 (David Rumsey Map Collection, Stanford Libraries)

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This record in the National Monuments Service's Historic Environment Viewer ↗

The National Monuments Service's description

At the top of a long gentle, S-facing pasture slope. A possible medieval church site (KD028-058002-) stands in a graveyard (KD028-058004-) c. 50m to the W, and the levelled Ballyshannon Castle (KD032-003002-) stood c. 80m to the SSW. Depicted on an 1853 sketch of an original ‘Plan of the Castle of Ballyshannon, with its Outworks, in 1650’, as a steep-sided, conical mound, with a possible bank enclosing the summit, on which a large tree is shown; and annotated, 'The high mount fortified which wee stormed' (Fitzgerald 1899-1902, 447). The plan shows an outwork skirting the base of the motte along the N, with a second outwork further N. A low denuded, grass-covered and partially tree-clad, oval, earthen mound (base diams. 30m E-W; 20m N-S; H 2m at S-3.5-4m at E, including natural slope).

Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy

Date of upload: 21 May 2013

References

FitzGerald, Lord W. 1899-1902 The FitzGeralds of Ballyshannon (Co. Kildare), and their successors thereat. Journal of the Kildare Archaeological Society 3, 425-52.

Nearby in the register

Other entries of the same register within about three miles of this one, by straight line.

Sites and Monuments Record data: National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland, licensed under CC BY 4.0. Record text is reproduced unchanged. National Monuments Service, Government of Ireland · CC BY 4.0
All Castle - motte in Kildare All County Kildare records All Ireland Heritage registers Historical markers (US)National Register of Historic Places (US)
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