Castle - tower house

The National Monuments Service's description

Situated on a natural hillock in poorly drained grassland overlooking a small lake immediately to S with medieval parish church (WM013-057----) of Killulagh 620m to W. Depicted on the 1837 OS Fair Plan maps as a small square-shaped structure annotated ‘Mulchan’s Castle in ruins’. Poorly preserved castle possibly a small tower house, of which only the S wall (L 7.5m; H 2m; Wall T 1m) and a section of the S end of the W wall (3.2m; H 3m) remains upstanding, with grass-covered wall footings visible elsewhere. The poorly walls are rubble built with no dressed stone and no base batter visible. The internal faces of the S and W walls have been robbed out. Originally the castle appears to have consisted of a rectangular shaped area (approx. ext. dims. 10m N-S; 9m E-W), situated on top of a hillock the base of which has been scarped with traces of an external fosse visible on E side of hillock and low berm at S. No evidence of an enclosing bawn. Mulchanstown Castle is not depicted on either the 1655-9 Down Survey parish map of Killulagh or the Barony map of Delvin (NLI, MS 723-4). In 1641 the lands of Mulchanstown belonged to Sir Thomas Nugent who is listed in the Down Survey as an ‘Irish Papist’.

Compiled by: Frank Coyne and Caimin O'Brien

Date of upload: 10 April 2018

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.

ASIAP - Archaeological Survey of Ireland Aerial Photographs (c. 1996 - c. 2010).