Old Farmyard

Castle, tower house

What is recorded here

Read the whole record

Bunown Castle standing on a rise of ground 1.2km NNE of Bunowen church (WM022-031001-) and graveyard (WM022-031003-), and 1km NW of Bunown Mill (WM022-046----). Castle described in 1979 as the ruins of a rectangular tower house (approx. ext. dims. 10m N-S x 7.5m E-W) standing two stories high, built of limestone, with good quoins and a pointed doorway now blocked in the SE wall and slit windows with dressed jambs on the first floor. No access to the interior of the castle. The tower house stands at the north-east end of a large sub-triangular walled enclosure. Well located 60m to SE. The only entrance is by a gateway now locked. Tower house now covered in vegetation and standing in abandoned farmyard. Impossible to examine structure due to cover of vegetation on the building. Bunown Castle depicted as a tower house type structure standing in the townlands of Bunowen, Tullimore Bogganboy & Aghacurra' on the 1654-7 Down Survey map of Bunowen parish (NLI, Ms 723-4). On this map the castle is standing on the lands of Bunowen which according to the map were 'Decreed to a protestant in Small pcells' (ibid.). The terrier of the Down Survey map of Bunown parish recorded that there stands 'on Bunowen & c. a Castle and a mill' (WM022-046----) which stood on the lands of Pierce Dillon, an Irish papist in 1641.

From the National Monuments Service (Archaeological Survey of Ireland) record WM022-022

The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.

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Photo credits

National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Tubberclair GAA; photographer not stated, tubberclair.westmeath.gaa.ie
Trenchspike, Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

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