Castle — tower house in Liberties OF Carlingford

This building is known as the 'Mint'. However, as this name does not appear in print before the late 19th century it likely to be the product of a romantic mind which sought to link it with the licence to mint coinage, granted to Carlingford in 1467. No coinage from Carlingford is known and the present building is noticeably lacking in features that one might associate with a mint. The building is, without doubt, a residence of one of the thriving merchant families that prospered in Carlingford and the surviving architectural details are indicative of a 16th century date for the structure. Built of roughly coursed limestone rubble and greywacke (int. dims. 7.1m by 6.1m) the house was three storeys high with the entrance was through a doorway at ground-floor level at the S end of the E wall (the castle is not aligned on a true N-S axis but for the purposes of this description the wall facing out onto Tholsel Street is considered to be E). There are three windows in the E wall at ground level facing onto Tholsel Street. They have hood moulding and ogee-headed arches of smoothly-dressed limestone. Two are single-lighted while the third has a double light. The arches are constructed of two stones and have highly decorated panels between the arches and the hood mouldings. The decoration consists mainly of broad interlace, but a horse and the bust of a man are also depicted. In the E wall there are two double-light windows at first-floor level which are divided by mullions and transoms and have window seats. The S one is blocked from the outside while the N one has four panels under the hood moulding, three of which are decorated with interlace, the fourth being plain. At the second-floor level there is a further window with twin lights and two-stone rounded arches. It has a hood moulding but no decorated panels. The jamb and sill stones on all the windows are decorated with deep punch-marks, sometimes making geometrical designs, normally of lozenge or wheel-like patterns. There is a large machicolation, c. 1.2m wide, resting on double sandstone corbels directly over the doorway and extending down from the battlements to c. 2m above the arch of the doorway. The doorway for the most part has been destroyed with only the original lower jamb stones extant. The jambs are of smoothly-dressed limestone with various geometric designs lightly punched into their surfaces. The floor of the second storey was carried on corbels set into the walls just above the level of the windows of the ground floor. Large beam holes can be seen above the second-floor level, and were used to carry the roof. In the SW angle at first-floor level there is a garderobe with a semi-circular recess an the remains of its seating. It is lit by an ope in the W wall with an ogee-headed arch of limestone and it has a cubby-hole in its E wall. Access to it is gained via a doorway with a single rounded sandstone arch which leads to a short mural passage. The chute for the garderobe can be seen at the base of the S wall of the SW angle. At ground-floor level in the W wall there is a cubby-hole and a small window of hammer dressed limestone. At first-floor level there is another window directly over that on the ground floor. It has a two-centered arch of limestone with glazing bar holes, and a flat-arched embrasure with single lintel plus window seats. The N wall has only one window, which is at second-floor level close to the NE angle. It has limestone jambs and is rectangular in shape. There is a well-preserved wide wall-walk with stepped crenellations and irregularly-spaced small opes in the parapets, which Leask (1948, 307) interprets as pistol loops. However, since they are situated so high up it is unlikely that they were used for pistols but rather for muskets. There is no evidence of a stone stairwell in the tower house so there must have been an internal wooden one. The S wall shows clearly the line of the roof of an earlier building which was lower than that of the present structure and must have extended eastwards. (Anon 1908, 313). This is a National Monument, in state guardianship: No. 424. The above description is derived from both the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Louth' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1986, no. 1112). See the attached view from NE Revised by: Paul Walsh Revised date of upload: 23 May 2016