Castle - unclassified

The National Monuments Service's description

In pasture, located on a prominent rise bordered at NE by a stream gully, straddling the townland boundary. There are broad views NW and SE. There is a church (MA102-044001-) and graveyard (MA102-044002-) c. 300m to N.
In the 1838 OS Letters, John O’Donovan records that ‘There was a castle, I was informed, in Tulranhan (Tul ‘srufhan) townland, of which there are, at present, no remains.’ He did not, however, identify the location, and the castle is not indicated on the OS 6-inch maps (O’Flanagan 1927, 391 (161)). Knox (1911, 325-7) identified its location with a series of earthworks (MA044002-) straddling the boundary between the townlands of Tulrohaun and Carrowneden. He suggested that it was a MacCostellos castle dating to the sixteenth century. He described and drew a plan of a mound (c. 9m x 9m at base; H c. 2.5m), on which he considered a stone castle once stood, surrounded by a number of low, subrectangular earthen platforms or baileys (MA044002-).
No upstanding remains of the castle building survive. Amidst a series of low, grass-covered subrectangular earthworks, a roughly square mound (9m NNE–SSW; 9m WNW–ESE; max H 1.6m at NNE), incorporated into the townland boundary wall on the S and W sides, may correspond to the feature identified by Knox as the castle mound. Its flat top (5.6m NNE–SSW; 5m WNW–ESE), however provides a relatively small space to have accommodated a castle.

Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy

Date of upload: 27 September 2022

References

O'Flanagan, Rev. M. (Compiler) 1927 Letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the county of Mayo collected during the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1838. Bray.

Knox, H.T. 1911 Some Connacht Raths and Motes. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 41, 205-40, 301-42.