What is recorded here

Doonmoon is a lost Irish town beneath County Limerick soil. In 1640 Gibbon fitz Gibbon lived there with a castle, a mill and twenty-two small cabins beside three thatched houses. The 1654-56 survey still called it a good Irish town, but the place has vanished entirely. Whatever life filled those cabins, the land kept the mystery rather than the boundary.

The precise location of a medieval settlement associated with Doonmoon (Ballynahinch) Castle (LI048-020----) has not been identified. The terrier of the 1654-56 Down Survey map of Down and Long parish map recorded that; ‘Upon Downemoone Standes a Faire Castle and a good Irish Towne’ (NLI MS 718). The 1654-56 Civil Survey of Limerick recorded that Gibbon fitz Gibbon of Doonmoone, an Irish Papist was in 1640 the owner of Doonmoone, ‘whereon stands a Castle [LI048-020----], Bawne [LI048-020001-] & a Mill’ along with ‘three tatch houses, two whereof have two stone Chymnies and about 22 smale Cabyns [LI048-020002-]’ (Simington 1938, 234). Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 22 September 2021

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