Dunmoe Castle

Situated on a bluff (H c. 20m at S) overlooking a weir on a W-E section of the River Boyne which is c. 100m to the S and c. 20m lower. This could be an early castle but its history is obscure. It withstood a siege by rebels in 1641 until Captain Power, its commander, was persuaded to surrender. According to the Civil Survey (1654-6) Thomas Darcy owned the entire parish consisting of 395 acres in 1640, and on the premises there was ‘a Castle, a Church, a Mill, an Orchard and a fishing weare’ (Simington 1940, 322). The D’Arcy family appears to have retained the castle in the Cromwellian settlement and rebuilt it in the reign of James II (1685-89). A drawing from 1795 by Francis Grose (1795, 82-3) shows it an occupied rectangular structure but it is said to have been burned in the rising of 1798 when the north half of it collapsed (Wilde 1849, 166-9).

This is a large rectangular structure (dims c. 15m E-W; c. 10m N-S) with circular towers at the angles, but only those at SE and SW survive. The ground floor is buried but was vaulted and had a loft as well as well as two rows of long arrow-loops on the S wall which could indicated a thirteenth century date. There is a newel stairs in the SW tower which has a key-hole gun-loop. The first floor has large windows that are robbed. There is a two-storey gabled building with an oven at the ground floor attached to the E. The church (ME025-018001-) is immediately adjacent to the W. (Sweetman 1999, 99-100)