Shankill Castle — Shankill

There is no castle or house depicted in Shankill on the Down Survey (1655-6) parish map of Shankill. It is described by Bence-Jones (1988, 258) as a, ‘castellated house incorporating a house built or re-modelled [in] 1713 by Peter Aylward, who came into the estate, which had previously belonged to the Butlers of Paulstown Castle, through his marriage to Elizabeth Butler. This early C18 house appears to have had a recessed centre and projecting end bays. Some time ante 1828, the end bays were crenelated, one of them being raised to look like a tower’. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage describes it as a, ‘detached five-bay two-storey Gothic-style house with dormer attic, c.1825, incorporating fabric of earlier house, 1713, comprising single-bay two-storey recessed bay having single-bay single-storey flat-roofed advanced glazed porch to ground floor, single-bay two-storey advanced flanking bays incorporating fabric of medieval tower house, c.1600, to left …Unpainted rendered walls with slight batter to 'tower house' bay, rendered dressings including battlemented full-height corner piers having slit-style blind apertures, some cross blind apertures, frieze to 'tower house' bay between stringcourses, battlemented parapets (some on corbel tables) with cut-stone coping, and some crow stepped-gabled parapets having cut-stone coping’. Apart for the description that the ‘tower’ has a slight base-batter, there is currently no other evidence to suggest that this ‘tower’ is medieval in date. It is possible that the 'tower' as Bence-Jones notes, was deliberately raised to create the illusion of a medieval tower when the house was castellated in the early 19th century. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 1 May 2020