Cromwell's Castle

Detached rectangular-plan two-storey rubble limestone fortification, built c.1650, converted c.1805 for use as battery, having round turrets to south-west and south-east corners and curved corners at north-west and north-east. Now disused. Battered base to south-east corner tower. Surrounded to east, south and west by stone-lined moat. Dressed limestone parapet and coping. Camber-arch door opening to south elevation with yellow brick voussoirs and reveals, and having timber fittings. Square-headed window openings to east elevation, with yellow brick jambs and limestone sills. Narrower windows elsehwere with bars.

The fortification known as Cromwell’s Castle was strategically sited to protect the river crossing at Banagher. Built in the mid-seventeenth century, it was later converted for use as a battery and thus formed part of an important group of late eighteenth and early nineteenth-century defences constructed to guard against the threat of a Napoleonic invasion. The defences along the River Shannon are of particular importance due to their inland location. The unusual and distinctive form of the building is a notable landscape feature today.