What is recorded here

Bawn in Clonkeen was a stone defensive enclosure ordered by the crown in 1569, yet no wall or trench remains visible on the gentle pasture slope above the River Boyne. The site endures only through local recognition and a fading map trace, transforming a military command into an absent shadow. That disappearance is not a failure of memory but a change of shape: the bawn stopped being a boundary people could touch and became a coordinate the land still carries.

According to Fitzgerald (1915-17, 376), 'in April, 1569, the crown made a grant … (to) Captain Henry Colley … provided that … he rebuild in Clonkeen ... a castle and bawn of stone … .' The castle (KD008-014----) is depicted as being occupied on a map of 1744 (NLI Ms. 9212, Map 13, 59), but is not shown on Taylor's 1783 map of County Kildare. In 1837 the OSL (Herity 2002, 31) recorded that, '… there is pointed out the site of an old Castle.' On a very gentle, SW-facing pasture slope just off the crest of a low N-S ridge, c. 25m N of the River Boyne and c. 190m W of River Bridge. There is no visible surface trace of the monument but this location is acknowledged locally as being the site of a castle. Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy Date of upload: 10 June 2011

Built by Captain Henry Colley in 1569 under a royal grant from the crown, the Bawn in Clonkeen is remembered as part of the English colonial effort to establish control in Ireland during the 16th century.

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