Castleboy Old Church

The Department's description

Exterior description and setting

Grass covered foundations (in the middle of a field) of a rectangular medieval church measuring roughly c.21m x c.8m and situated c.90m north of the ruins of Castleboy. Odd pieces of rubble remain, but no substantial sections of the walls are visible.

Historical information

The small parish of Castleboy was also known as Johnstown, owing to the association of this church with the order of St. John of Jerusalem (now the Knights of Malta), an order which was originally instituted to protect the Christians of the Holy Land and other pilgrims going to Jerusalem.

The church itself is supposed to have been built by Hugh de Lacy in the late twelfth century (perhaps 1189), and is probably ‘the hospital land in the Ards’ (‘terram hospitalariorum in Arte’) mentioned in a pipe roll of c.1200. Bishop Reeves in his Ecclesiastical antiquities of Down Connor and Dromore, (1847) gives a description of the church, stating that it had triple lancet windows on the E., a single lancet on the W. and a door and lancet on N. and S., which, according to the authors of the Archaeological Survey of Co. Down (1966), suggests a building of the thirteenth century.

The fate of the church during the later middle ages and the early modern period remains a mystery. The near by tower house of Castleboy (‘the yellow castle’) was constructed possibly during the fifteenth century and by 1584 the ‘the preceptory of the Arde, with the Manor of Johnstone’ were leased to one George Alexander. A patent roll of 1603 gives some details of the estate of ‘the late monastery of St. John of Jerusalem’, which suggests that the order in this area, had, by that stage, become a victim of the Reformation. The building itself was in ruin when visited by Walter Harris in 1744 and ‘very little’ of the fabric could be seen by the compilers of the OS Memoirs in the 1830s.

References- Primary sources
1 'Ecclesiastical antiquities of Down, Connor and Dromore', ed. William Reeves (Dublin 1847) p.164. [Bishop Reeves quotes from a pipe roll of c.1200 relating to the presence of the Order of St. John in the area.]
2 “Calendar and index to the fiants of the reign of Elizabeth I”, appendix to the 11th-13th, 15-18th and '21-22nd Reports of the Deputy keeper of public records in Ireland' (Dublin 1879-81, 1883-86, 1889-90) ms 4420. [Lease of the church lands in 1584.]
3 Irish Patent Rolls of James I: facsimile of the Irish record commissioners’ calendar prepared prior to 1830 (Dublin 1966), doc. 10a. [Details of the ‘late monastery’ in 1603.]

Secondary sources
1 Walter Harris 'The Ancient and Present State of The County of Down' (Dublin 1744), p. 67.
2 PRONI Ordnance Survey Maps, 1st Edition, 1834, Co. Down 25.
3 Ordnance Survey Memoirs of Ireland Vol.7: Parishes of County Down II, ed. Angelique Day and Patrick McWilliams (QUB 1991), p. 27.
4 Rev. J. O’ Laverty 'Diocese of Down and Connor Ancient and Modern' (1878, reprinted 1980), Vol. I pp. 411-415.
5 G.F. Savage-Armstrong 'The Savage Family in Ulster' (London 1906).
6 'Archaeological Survey of County Down' (Belfast, 1966), p. 301.
7 A.J. Hughes and R.J. Hannan 'Place-Names of Northern Ireland Vol. Two, County Down II- The Ards', pp. 75-78.
8 Environment and Heritage Service SMR Dow 25.15

Criteria for listing: architectural interest

Not listed

Criteria for listing: historic interest

Not listed

Evaluation

Grass covered remains of a former medieval church.