Kirkistown Castle
{{Short description|Castle in County Down, Northern Ireland}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=April 2022}}
{{use Hiberno-English|date=September 2024}}
{{coord|54.4424|-5.4661|display=title|region:GB_scale:5000}}
Kirkistown Castle is a tower house situated near Cloghy, County Down, Northern Ireland.
History
The building is a three-storey tower house, built in 1622 by Roland Savage, a Norman landlord,{{cite web|title=Kirkistown Castle |work=goireland.com |url=http://www.goireland.com/down/kirkistown-castle-attraction-castles-historical-id14045.htm |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20080724132326/http://www.goireland.com/down/kirkistown-castle-attraction-castles-historical-id14045.htm |archivedate=2008-07-24 }} at the site of a ninth-century round tower. It was occupied until 1731, when it was deserted.
Structure
The house post-dates the Plantation, but is fully in the late medieval tower-house tradition. Parts of the bawn wall survive with three-quarter round flanker towers at the angles. The tower was remodelled in Gothic style in 1800 by a Col. Johnston, and in 1836 some further work was performed by a very young Master Montgomery of Grey Abbey. The building was left, however, with a partial roof and broken windows, and the elements soon returned it to disrepair.{{cite web | title=The Parish of Ardkeen | work=Ros Davies' Co. Down, Northern Ireland Genealogy Website | url=http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rosdavies/PHOTOSwords/ArdkeenAll.htm | access-date=2008-11-06 | archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160125125218/http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~rosdavies/PHOTOSwords/ArdkeenAll.htm | archive-date=2016-01-25 | url-status=dead }}
The Northern Ireland Environment Agency opened it to the public for the first time in 2001.{{Citation needed|date=November 2008}}