Merrion Castle, house in County Dublin

What is recorded here

Merrion Castle reached the point where a family representative complained in 1737 that no gentleman could sit down there cleanly. For all their titles and estates, the Fitzwilliams had been defeated by the question, ‘Are those your good trousers?’

Shown on the first edition of the OS 6 " maps as Merrion Castle this structure lay just S of the original castle (DU023-001001-) which the Fitzwilliam family occupied as their primary seat from the 15th to the early 18th century. In 1711 a new rural seat was established by the fourth Viscount at Mount Merrion (DU023-006----) as the original castle at Merrion was run down. In 1737 an agent of the Fitwilliam family Richard Mathews remarked that 'no gentlemen could pretend to sitt down there, in a Cleane way' (O'Kane 2016, 108). Nearby, another agent of the Fitzwilliam family, Bryan Fagan 'built a house of Bricke and Slatted and Encompassed a large Garden with a Stone wall nine feet high' in 1738 as recounted in correspondence between Richard Mathews and Lord Fitzwilliam (NAI MSS 97/46/1/2/3/1; O'Kane 2011, 99). Updated: 8 April 2020 Compiled by: Margaret Keane

From the National Monuments Service (Archaeological Survey of Ireland) record DU023-001002

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