Bawn

The National Monuments Service's description

The fortified house known as Essex castle (MO031-034----) and its bawn were built 1628-33 and are situated on a bluff overlooking a NW-SE stream and its bridge (MO031-105----) in Carrickmacross. A survey by Thomas Raven (1634) and published by Shirley (1879, 110) depicts the castle within a rectangular bawn with circular corner towers at the S and W angles and with a fortified gateway between them. There are smaller postern gates on other walls as well as stables or outhouses built into the long walls of the bawn. After the castle was burnt in 1688 it continued to provide a base for the land agents for the Weymouth, and subsequently the Bath estate. A drawing of the castle from 1736 and published by Shirley (1845, 112) shows the house and bawn as essentially unchanged from the Raven drawing.
In 1851 William S. Trent became the land agent, and he invested in rebuilding the castle. He probably constructed the block overlooking Castle Street, incorporating the corner towers of the bawn and the gatehouse. In 1888 the Bath estate was sold to its tenants, and Rev. Peter Birmingham, the Roman Catholic parish priest of Carrickmacross, purchased the castle and land extending SE to Lough Naglack for the Sisters of Saint Louis (McKenna 1920, 504-06). The sisters opened a boarding school for girls that still flourishes, although no longer taking boarders and without the involvement of the sisters.
The gatehouse could be incorporated into the castellated central block of what was the convent, and the corner towers could be entombed in the large polygonal bay windows at the NW and SE end-walls of this block. The bawn would have occupied the area of the school (dims c. 60m NE-SW; c. 35-40m NW-SE) between the convent building and Distillery Lane at the NE end. Archaeological testing (00E0129) c. 100m E of the school produced no related material (O'Carroll 2002).Nor did further archaeological testing (04E1700) c. 80m to the S (Dempsey 2005).

See the attached images;
_1 Ravens's view after Shirley (1879, 110)
_2 View of the Convent wing from the SW showing the castellated central section and the end bay-windows. Courtesy of the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage

Compiled by: Michael Moore

Date of upload: 28 July, 2017
Amended: 13 January 2020

References

O'Carroll, F. 2002 Distillery Lane, Drummond Outra, Carrickmacross. Adjacent to castle In I. Bennett (ed.), Excavations 2000: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland, (No. 789). Bray. Wordwell.

McKenna, Rev. J. E. 1920 Parochial History of the Diocese of Clogher. 2 vols, Enniskillen, Author

Dempsey, J. 2005 Proposed Sports hall, St Louis secondary school, Carrickmacross, County Monaghan. Part B – Archaeological Impact Assessment. Licence No. 04E1700. Unpublished report, Author

Shirley, E.P. 1845 Some account of the territory or dominion of Farney, in the Province of Ulster. London. Pickering

Shirley, E.P. 1879 (Reprint 1988) The history of the county of Monaghan. London. Pickering.