Site of Castle Nugent — Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

Castle Nugent stood on a natural rise above County Longford, watching every road and field until Thomas Nugent claimed it in 1620. It has since surrendered most of its shape to grass and memory, leaving only shallow banks where a tower once pierced the sky.

On a prominent, natural rise commanding extensive views in all directions. An early 17th-century map of Ardagh barony (BL, Cotton MS Augustus I.ii.25) depicts a tower house-type building in the townland of ‘Blewtoge’, now Castlenugent. In 1620 Thomas Nugent received a grant that included the ‘castle, 100a arable and pasture, and 30a wood and bog in Blightoge adjoining Lisrean’ (Cal. pat. rolls Ire., Jas I, 499). The terrier of the Down Survey (1655–6) map of Street parish (NLI, MS 719) records that in ‘Blighloge there Stands a Castle’. Apart from a series of low banks of earth and stone following no discernible pattern, no visible surface trace survives. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 3 October 2012

The castle was likely built by the Nugent family, who were Hiberno-Norman lords with significant landholdings in the region during the medieval period. It is remembered for its strategic location and as an example of early tower house architecture in Ireland.

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