What is recorded here

Monkstown Castle rose in 1636 as Anastacia Archdeacon's fortified tower, overlooking Cork harbour with four corner bartizans and stepped crenellations. Legend claims her husband returned from Spain, mistook the strange structure for an enemy fort, and blasted it with cannon fire before recognizing his own home. The building survived that marital disaster, later housing soldiers, club members, and the Bernard Shaw family, preserving its rugged defensive character through centuries of changing use.

Detached fortified house, built 1636, comprising central two-stage core with attic accommodation, having square-plan four-stage with attic accommodation gabled towers with corner bartizans to each corner. Pitched slate roofs with rendered chimneystacks. Stepped crenellations to bartizans, supported on ashlar stone corbels. Rendered walls over rubble stone construction, having ashlar stone string courses between floors. Square-headed openings, having limestone dressings and some label mouldings, set in single, bipartite, tripartite and quarpartite arrangements. Segmental-arch entrance having moulded limestone surround with hood moulding, and pair of recent timber sheet doors.

Set on an elevated site overlooking Cork harbour, this eye-catching tower house is an interesting reminder of the scale and form of defensive dwellings in the seventeenth century. Built by Anastacia Archdeacon in the 1630s, it is said to have been damaged by her husband's cannon fire on his return by sea from campaign in Spain to Cork, as he thought it had been built by an occupying force. Subsequent owners included Captain Thomas Plunkett, Colonel Huncks, Primate Michael Boyle Archbishop of Armagh and Lord Chancellor of Ireland, Sir Thomas Versey, John Callaghan and the Bernard Shaw family. It was used as a military barracks from 1808-14, and as a clubhouse for much of the twentieth century. Though many alterations were undertaken over the centuries, it retains much of its historic character, and is an excellent example of its type.

This does not grant access. Most recorded buildings are privately owned; view them only from public ground unless the owner allows entry.