What is recorded here

Kilgobbin Castle is a three-storey granite tower house at the foot of the Dublin Mountains, built for the Walsh family and still standing with its SE corner tower projecting above the parapet. Its vaulted ground floor, narrow south-wall entrance, and surviving upper-floor fireplace suggest a small but defiant home where people lived, watched the valley, and kept firelight against the mountain dark. The collapsed north end and undercut interior walls remind the visitor that even stone releases what it holds when centuries pass.

This impressive tower house stands in private ground at the foot of the Dublin Mountains. It was associated with the Walsh family (Goodbody 1993, 19-22). It rises to three storeys with stepped battlements marked by a string course and a SE corner tower which projects above parapet level. It is built of randomly coursed granite blocks with small packing stones. The entrance is in the S wall through a pointed segmental arched opening. It is rectangular in plan (int. dims. L 8.2m; Wth 4.8m) with a vaulted ground floor on a N-S axis and a stair turret in the SE. The interior is lit by a slit ope in the S wall. The N end collapsed in the 19th-century but the N and E walls survive to foundation level. The base of the walls are considerably undercut in the interior. There are beam holes visible at the top of the walls where the vault starts over the ground floor. The former existence of a loft at this level is indicated by the presence of a slit ope in the S wall. There are remains of a fireplace on the W wall of the upper floor and a square-headed rectangular window, with chamfered granite jambs. A lookout platform is carried on a squinch arch (Anon 1900, 190-91, Anon 1914, 227-8; 1983, 79-81). In the field to the N of the tower house a medieval ditch (L 14m, Wth 4m, d 1.2-1.3m) was excavated in 2003. The ditch deposits yielded unburnt bone and four sherds of medieval pottery (Hagen, I. 2006, 163). Compiled by: Geraldine Stout and Padraig Clancy. Revised upload on: 21 April 2018.

Built by the Walsh family in the late medieval period, Kilgobbin Castle is remembered for its association with one of the prominent local families in the region and for its well-preserved tower house architecture.

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