What is recorded here

Clonkeen Castle vanished before Taylor drew his map, leaving only a gentle pasture slope where Henry Colley once rebuilt stone walls for the crown. The Boyne still flows twenty metres south, unaware that human ambition once rose and collapsed above it. Local memory preserves the absence, pointing to empty grass as though darkness itself had occupied the castle. Forgetting is not loss when the land keeps the shape of what disappeared.

According to Fitzgerald (1915-17, 376), 'in April, 1569, the crown made a grant … (to) Captain Henry Colley … provided that … he rebuild in Clonkeen ... a castle and bawn of stone … .' The castle is depicted as being occupied on a map of 1744 (NLI Ms. 9212, Map 13, 59), but is not shown on Taylor's 1783 map of County Kildare. In 1837 the OSL (Herity 2002, 31) recorded that, '… there is pointed out the site of an old Castle.' On a very gentle, SW-facing pasture slope just off the crest of a low N-S ridge, c. 25m N of the River Boyne and c. 190m W of River Bridge. There is no visible surface trace of the monument but this location is still acknowledged locally as being the site of a castle. Compiled by: Gearóid Conroy Date of upload: 10 June 2011

Built by Captain Henry Colley in 1569 under a royal grant from the crown, Clonkeen Castle was part of English colonial efforts to establish control in Ireland during the 16th century. It is remembered as an example of early Elizabethan military architecture and colonial strategy in the region.

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