What is recorded here

Ballindoney presents a ghostly rectangle on old maps yet withholds every brick from modern eyes. Dermot McDowling Cavanagh held five hundred acres there during the Civil Survey, but no human hand has placed a castle stone within living memory. The land keeps its own counsel, offering a ringfort nearby and a hollow valley beneath White Mountain instead of the fortress demanded by ink and date. What was built there has returned to soil, leaving only the shape of absence for others to measure.

Depicted faintly as a rectangular structure (dims. c. 20m NE-SW; c. 10m NW-SE) on the 1839 ed. of the OS 6 inch map and described as 'Site of Castle' on both the 1839 and 1925 eds. According to the Civil Survey (1654-56) five hundred acres at Ballendone were owned by Dermot McDowling Cavanagh, an Irish papist, in 1641, but there is no record of a castle (Simington 1953, 209). It is located on fairly level land towards the bottom of a SE-facing slope of White Mountain, and at the head of a small NW-SE valley. Nothing is visible at ground level in pasture. Ringfort (WX024-017----) is c. 120m to the NW. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Wexford' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1996). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Compiled by: Michael Moore Date of upload/revision: 25 June, 2012

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