What is recorded here

Castleforbes Demesne contains the barrel-vaulted remains of a castle taken during the 1641 rebellion. Arthur Forbes received the land in 1623, but the castle did not belong to memory so much as to violence. Its walls still stand inside the entrance gateway of the present house, carrying the shape of the attack upward into the building people still walk through.

On level, low-lying ground within the demesne of Castleforbes, c. 55m to the NNW of a 17th-century house (LF008-012----) that was subsequently incorporated into the present 18th-/19th-century ‘Castle Forbes’ house. Arthur Forbes settled in Ireland in 1620 and in 1623 he was granted lands in Clonguish and Lisbrack (Cal. pat. rolls Ire., Jas I, 540-1), which included a castle. It is recorded that the castle was taken by Preston in 1641 (O’Donnell 1969, 34). The 1641 depositions note that during an attack on the castle and bawn (LF008-012003-) by Irish rebels, all the windows were 'shott in' and people were 'killd some there in the howse & some on the walls, And on the other syde those of the Castle discharged out of the Castle against the Rebells and killd many of them' (TCD, MS 817, fol. 178r). The barrel-vaulted remains of the castle are incorporated into the entrance gateway of the present house (Casey and Rowan 1993, 190). An armorial plaque (LF008-012004-) may be from it. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 3 October 2012

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