Town defences

The National Monuments Service's description

Monaghan town is situated on a hill or low ridge between Peter’s Lake to the N and Convent Lake to the S. Monaghan was incorporated as a county with five baronies in 1585, and this location where there was already a friary and a castle or strongpoint of the MacMahons together with a small settlement may have been selected then for future development as a county town. In 1589-91 the lord deputy, Sir William FitzWilliam, took advantage of a Mac Mahon dispute to impose a land settlement, and established a garrison here, effectively abolishing the Mac Mahon chieftainship and the use of Brehon law. The garrison at Monaghan was probably abandoned in 1595 after the battle of Clontibret but it was re-established by John Berkley in 1602. In 1604 Sir Edward Blayney was appointed seneschal or governor of the county and the garrison, and two years later he received extensive lands around the town and what would become Castleblayney (Duffy 1981. 14, fig. 5). These were confirmed to him in 1612, although the castle at Monaghan was specifically excluded (Coyle 1980). In 1606 Sir John Davies, the attorney general, described the town but does not mention any fortifications (Hunter 1975).
A map of Richard Bartlett of c. 1602 shows a fortified enclosure with fourteen thatched houses and eight bastions. This is a fanciful idealised fortified town, which did not exist at Monaghan then. The town is represented on a slightly later map prepared for Sir Edward Blayney, probably c. 1611-13 and now held in Trinity College Dublin (Ms 1209 (32)) which was illustrated by Ó Gallachair (1962, 145). It depicts the town as a fortified rectangular area which was defended by walls or ramparts and outer fosses. The town would have been a large rectangle (dims c. 500m E-W; c. 400m N-S), but it would not have been as regular as depicted on the Trinity map. The rear of properties on the identified streets provide the best indication of where the perimeter of the town and its fortifications lay, notably the straight lines formed by the backs of properties on the NE side of Dublin St. and the W side of Park St. (Bradley and Dunne 1989, 19-21). Excavations (02E1147; 03E0027) on the N side of the Diamond uncovered evidence of a large fosse (Wth of top 14-20m; max. D 3m) where it might be expected on the N side of the town. The fosse was lined with marl in order to retain water, which it could have taken from St Peter's Lough for the defences on this side, and similar trenches can be expected on the other sides. (O’Connor 2002, 2006)

Date of upload: 14 April 2011

See attached images of Monaghan town by Bartlett 1602 (MO009-060_1 copy) and c. 1612-13 (MO009-060_2a copy)

Compiled by: Michael Moore

O’Connor, D. 2002 Archaeological assessment of site of The Westerna Arms Hotel at The Diamond, Monaghan Town, Count y Monaghan. Licence No. 02E1447, unpublished report, Cultural Resource Development Services Ltd.

References

Ó Gallachair, Rev. P. 1962 The 1641 war in Clogher. Clogher Record, vol. 4, No. 3, 135-47.

Duffy, P. J. 1981 The territorial organization of Gaelic landownership and its transformation in County Monaghan, 1591-1640. Irish Geography, 14, 1-26.

O' Connor 2006 Westenra Arms Hotel, The Diamond, Monaghan. Town ditch. In I. Bennett (ed.), Excavations 2003: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland, 402, No. 1495. Bray. Wordwell

Hunter, R.J. 1975 Carews survey of Ulster, 1611: the voluntary works. Ulster Journal of Archaeology Ser. 3, 38, 81-2.