What is recorded here

Indicated is a deserted medieval borough in County Kildare where Thomas de Flanders or Milo de Stanton laid claims before the twelfth century ended. It lost much of its life in the fourteenth century, yet people remained there when Sir Piers Fitzjames Fitzgerald and his family burned to death in a straw-thatched castle in 1593-4. The place still carries that sudden violence and the ordinary continuity of a town that refused to vanish completely.

A borough was established at Ardree before the end of the twelfth century by either Thomas de Flanders or Milo de Stanton. It appears to have dwindled in the fourteenth century, although the population did not disappear entirely. Fitzgerald states that in 1593-4 Sir Piers Fitzjames Fitzgerald and his family were burnt to death in his 'little castle (KD035-032004-) that was but thatched with straw or sedge in his town of Ardree', indicating that there was then at least one fortified house here (JKAS 1899-1902, 431). (Bradley et al. 1986, vol. 1, 15-22)

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