What is recorded here

Castle, unclassified in Walshestown South, County Westmeath. A castle, hall, orchard, barbican, water-mill and forty messuages appeared in a 1609 grant to Sir Robert Nugent, suggesting Walshestown House rose where an older defenced place had stood. The list reads like a small kingdom made measurable: gardens, loughs, fishings, bog, heath and marsh.

Walshestown House may have been built on the site of a medieval castle mentioned in a land grant of 1609. In this year Sir Robert Nugent of Walshestown was granted 'a castle, and a great stone building, a hall, an orchard, a barbican, 40 messuages, 40 gardens, a water-mill [WM018-153----], and 3 plowlands in Ballynebranagh otherwise Walshetowne or Branaghton, with the old towns and hamlets thereof, viz. Ballybrenachrey, Heathton, the Upper and the Nether Ballenloughans or Loughanstownes, Bally-Edmond, and Ballynegalbrenagh, containing 360a arable, 40a meadow, 40a pasture, 40a common, 100a heath and mountain, 40a bog, 40a fen, 40a marsh, 40a moor, four loughs called Loughcolman, Loughanekyracke, Loughgarre, and Loughlabane otherwise Croynlough or Loughskragh, with all their fishings and profits' (Cal. pat. rolls Ire., Jas I, 196). Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 10 November 2017

Sir Robert Nugent was granted a castle at Walshestown in 1609, likely built by an earlier Gaelic family, possibly the MacMahons. It is remembered as part of the colonial and Gaelic land struggle in 17th-century Ireland.

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