Castle - tower house

The National Monuments Service's description

Bunown Castle standing on a rise of ground 1.2km NNE of Bunowen church (WM022-031001-) and graveyard (WM022-031003-), and 1km NW of Bunown Mill (WM022-046----). Castle described in 1979 as the ruins of a rectangular tower house (approx. ext. dims. 10m N-S x 7.5m E-W) standing two stories high, built of limestone, with good quoins and a pointed doorway now blocked in the SE wall and slit windows with dressed jambs on the first floor. No access to the interior of the castle. The tower house stands at the north-east end of a large sub-triangular walled enclosure. Well located 60m to SE. The only entrance is by a gateway now locked. Tower house now covered in vegetation and standing in abandoned farmyard. Impossible to examine structure due to cover of vegetation on the building.
Bunown Castle depicted as a tower house type structure standing in the townlands of Bunowen, Tullimore Bogganboy & Aghacurra' on the 1654-7 Down Survey map of Bunowen parish (NLI, Ms 723-4). On this map the castle is standing on the lands of Bunowen which according to the map were 'Decreed to a protestant in Small pcells' (ibid.). The terrier of the Down Survey map of Bunown parish recorded that there stands 'on Bunowen & c. a Castle and a mill' (WM022-046----) which stood on the lands of Pierce Dillon, an Irish papist in 1641.

Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien

Date of upload: 13 December 2017

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.