What is recorded here

Lea Castle stands above a medieval town that vanished so completely its streets may have become drainage ditches, forcing later people to invent boundaries the earth had already erased. John de Saundford camped there in 1279 with horses, sutlers and retainers while resisting Offaly, yet by 1323 the borough had shrunk to a handful of occupied plots. The O'Connors burned Ley in 1307, and the ground itself seems to have finished the work, taking back what the castle could not keep.

Unlocated settlement within townland, mentioned in the OS letters as 'Towne and fieldes of Garriknayre' from the O'Doyne manuscripts (O'Flanagan 1933, vol. 2, p. 44). Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 17 December 2007

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