What is recorded here

Farthingstown Castle was a tower house on Rathconrath lands when Richard Dalton held it during the upheavals of the 1640s. The building has vanished entirely, leaving only a modern rubble cairn around a large tree stump to mark where its walls once rose. That much is known; the rest belongs to imagination, where a castle may have fallen, been forgotten or simply stopped being useful to the people who recorded it.

No surface remains visible of Farthingstown Castle which is depicted on the 1655-9 Down Survey map of Rathconrath parish (NLI, MS 723-4). On this map a tower house type structure is depicted standing on lands in the possession of Richard Dalton, listed as an 'Irish Papist' in 1641 (ibid.). Modern rubble built cairn built around a large tree stump is all that survives where castle site is marked on the OS 6-inch map. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 5 October 2016

Built in the 17th century, Farthingstown Castle was likely a tower house held by a local Gaelic or Anglo-Irish family in County Down. Its depiction on the Down Survey map highlights its historical presence in the Rathconrath parish landscape during the post-plantation period of Irish history.

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