What is recorded here

No castle wall, chamber, gate or broken stone is visible at Cloonglasny Beg today, though a 1911 map still draws a hollow twenty-metre rectangle and calls it Ballyellia Castle. The name may preserve a lost house, a mapping mistake or a memory carried by the Birne and Conroy families who held land there in 1641. Whatever it was, the earth has taken it back, leaving only a line on paper and a field that refuses to explain itself.

Three of the four named owners of land in the ‘6 Quarters of Clonglassney’ in 1641 were of the Birne family, the fourth being Joan Ny Conroy (Simington 1949, 86-88), but there is no record of a castle. However, a castle is represented as a hollow rectangular structure (dims c. 20m x 20m) inside the perimeter of the large enclosure (RO017-143001-) at NE only on the 1911 ed. of the OS 6-inch map where it is described as 'Ballyellia Castle' in gothic lettering. No feature is visible at ground level. Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of revised upload: 27 November 2018

Ballyellia Castle was likely held by the Birne family in the 17th century, as they were prominent landowners in the area by 1641. The site is remembered for its historical association with local landholding families during a period of significant political and social change in Ireland.

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