Castle - tower house

The National Monuments Service's description

Situated on at N end of low ridge with River Glore 70m to N and possible mill race now dried up 40m to N as depicted on the 1837 ed. OS 6-inch map. Motte and bailey castle (WM003-070----) and wayside cross (WM003-069---) 290m to N, building (WM006-066001-) annotated as ‘Tower’ in gothic script on 1837 ed. OS 6-inch map 90m to SSE. Depicted as a multi-storey tower with two storey house with gable chimney stack built onto one side of the tower on the 1657 Down Survey map of Fore barony (NLI, MS 723-4). The terrier of the 1657 Down Survey map of Rathgarve parish lists Richard Nugent, Earl of Westmeath, as the owner of the lands of Millcastle in 1641 (ibid.). In 1837 the Ordnance Survey Letters recorded that in Millcastle there was ‘to be seen in good preservation the ruins of a castle which gave name to the townland. It is situated on the south side of the River Glore, and near stood originally a mill (WM003-066002-) which gave it name, but of that not even the site can now be pointed out. Not far from the ruin of Millcastle is a square tower (WM003-066001-) evidently of the same age and style with the castle itself’ (O’Flanagan 1931, 103).
Poorly preserved remains of a rectangular-shaped tower house (approx. ext. dims. 10.65m E-W; wall T 1.25m) of which only the NW wall (ext. L 10.65m) and approximately half of the NE & SW walls (ext. L of W wall 5.6m) survive. Built of rough undressed limestone blocks, laid in irregular courses. The corners of the tower are rounded externally and the walls are battered at the base. The NW wall stands two storeys high with springers of a stone vault visible at first floor level. There are a number of irregular openings in the walls which probably mark the location of windows. One small plain rectangular ope survives in the NW wall near the N corner. What may be the remains of a chimney flue can be seen in the SW corner. There are the remains of a narrow mural stairs in the NW corner now blocked up. To the E & SE of the castle old banks extend across the field forming a number of enclosures (WM003-066002-). Some of these earthworks are quite irregular and are very poorly preserved. An old roadway runs along the W & NW sides of the castle. The roadway crosses a dried up water-channel possibly an old mill-race via an old bridge. This water channel running from E-W was diverted from the River Glore via a cut in the SW side of the river 100m NE of the castle. The water-channel or millrace is clearly visible on Digital Globe aerial photographs taken November 2011.

Compiled by: Frank Coyne & Caimin O'Brien

Date of upload: 5 December 2016

References

NLI, MS 723-4 - National Library of Ireland, The parish maps of the Down Survey for the County of Westmeath, attested by W. Petty, in 1659. Copied by Daniel O'Brien. A set of 67 maps with accompanying terriers in two volumes, 1786-7. Dublin.

O'Flanagan, Rev. M. (Compiler) 1931 Letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the county of Westmeath collected during the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1837. Bray.