Castle - unclassified

The National Monuments Service's description

No surface remains visible of the building indicated on first ed. OS 6-inch map but not on subsequent editions. Depicted as a small rectangular structure on the W shore of Lough Ennell and annotated as a 'Ruin' on the 1837 Ordnance Survey Plan. It has been suggested that this building may have been the remains of Kilcowle [Kilcooley] Castle listed in a 1609 land grant to Sir Robert Nugent of Walshestown. In this year Sir Robert Nugent was granted 'a castle, a bawn (WM025-117001-), a large orchard or croft, 20 messuages; 20 gardens, a watermill (WM025-117002-), 4 carucates of free land, containing by estimation of the great measure in the said manor and the town of Kilcowle, parcels of the demesne, 480a arable, 100a meadow, 200a pasture, furze, and bush, 40a wood, 40a marsh, 40a bog, 50a moor — the great lough called Loughenia otherwise Loughenill [Lough Ennell], with the fishing thereof, as far as it mears with the lands of Disert [Dysart] and Kilcowle ; also the three islands therein called the great island [Dysart Island], 2a, Robbins island ½a, and Crowyence [Croincha], 1a – the river, and the fishing thereof, running upon and near the said manor of Disert and Kilcowle in Tolchane-Even' (Cal. pat. rolls Ire., Jas I, 196). Numerous earthworks are visible on Digital Globe aerial photographs in the area where the ruin is indicated on the OS Fair Plan Map. Kilcooley House stands 470m to the W, Dysart Island is 750m to the E and Croincha Island (WM025-150---) lies 720m to the S.

Compiled and revised by: Caimin O'Brien

Date of revised upload: 10 November 2017

References

Cal. pat. rolls Ire., Jas I - Irish patent rolls of James I: facsimile of the Irish record commissioners' calendar prepared prior to 1830, with foreword by M.C. Griffith (Irish Manuscripts Commission, Dublin, 1966)