Kilclief Castle (;

Ordnance Survey The Ordnance Survey (OS) is the national mapping agency for Great Britain. The agency's name indicates its original military purpose (see Artillery, ordnance and surveying), which was to map Scotland in the wake of the Jacobite rising of ...

ref: J597457) is a tower-house

castle A castle is a type of fortification, fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by Military order (monastic society), military orders. Scholars usually consider a ''castle'' to be the private ...

beside

Strangford Lough Strangford Lough () is a large sea lough or inlet in County Down, in the east of Northern Ireland. It is the largest inlet in Ireland and the wider British Isles, covering . The lough is almost fully enclosed by the Ards Peninsula and is linke ...

and 2.5 miles (4 km) south of the village of

Strangford Strangford (from Old Norse ''Strangr fjörðr'', meaning "strong sea-inlet") is a small village at the mouth of Strangford Lough, on the Lecale peninsula in County Down, Northern Ireland. It had a population of 475 at the 2001 census. On th ...

County Down County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 552,261. It borders County Antrim to the ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ; ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, part of the United Kingdom in the north-east of the island of Ireland. It has been #Descriptions, variously described as a country, province or region. Northern Ireland shares Repub ...

Kilclief Kilclief (from the Irish ''Cill Cléithe'' meaning 'church of wattle') is a civil parish in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is situated in the historic baronies of Lecale Lower and Lecale Upper. It is also a townland A townland (; Ulste ...

is a hamlet on the Strangford to

Ardglass Ardglass () is a coastal fishing village, townland (of 321 acres) and civil parish in County Down, Northern Ireland, in the historic barony of Lecale Lower. It is still a relatively important fishing harbour. It is situated on the B1 Ardglas ...

road.

History

Kilclief Castle was the earliest tower-house in Lecale, and was built between 1412 or 1413 and 1441. It was originally occupied by John Sely, who is said to have built the castle. John Sely was Bishop of Down from 1429 to 1443, when he was ejected and removed from his offices for living there with Lettice Whailey Savage, a married woman. Lettice Savage also lived in Smithing-Upon-Down, and was an avid collector of rare ceramics. The building was garrisoned for the Crown by Nicholas FitzSymon and ten warders from 1601 to 1602.

Features

The castle is tall with four floors. The first floor is vaulted in stone, with two projecting

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Optical microscope#Objective turret (revolver or revolving nose piece), Objective turre ...

s. One (to the south-east) contains a spiral stair and the other (to the north-east) a series of

garderobe Garderobe is a historic term for a room in a medieval castle. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' gives as its first meaning a store-room for valuables, but also acknowledges "by extension, a private room, a bed-chamber; also a privy". The word der ...

s (

latrine A latrine is a toilet or an even simpler facility that is used as a toilet within a sanitation system. For example, it can be a communal trench in the earth in a camp to be used as emergency sanitation, a hole in the ground ( pit latrine), or ...

s) with access from three of the four floors. These projecting turrets are joined at roof level by a high

machicolation In architecture, a machicolation () is an opening between the supporting corbels of a battlement through which defenders could target attackers who had reached the base of the defensive wall. A smaller related structure that only protects key ...

arch covering a drop-hole for dropping missiles on unwelcome visitors below. There are stepped

battlement A battlement, in defensive architecture, such as that of city walls or castles, comprises a parapet (a defensive low wall between chest-height and head-height), in which gaps or indentations, which are often rectangular, occur at intervals ...

s. As at Jordan's Castle, the ground floor chamber has a semicircular

barrel vault A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...

built on wicker centering. On the second floor a 13th-century coffin-lid from a nearby church was reused as a

lintel A lintel or lintol is a type of beam (a horizontal structural element) that spans openings such as portals, doors, windows and fireplaces. It can be a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamented/structural item. In the case ...

for the fireplace. The two-light window in the east wall is a modern reconstruction based on a surviving fragment. The castle is now in state care. Guided tours are available in July and August.

References

Notes

Sources

*Historic Monuments of Northern Ireland, Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland. HMSO, Belfast, 1983. *Downpatrick & Lecale. A Short Historical Guide. Donnelly, JP & Donnelly, MM. 1980. *Guide to National & Historic Monuments of Ireland. Harbison, P. Gill & Macmillan, Dublin. 1992. *Irish Castles & Castellated Houses. Leask, HG. First ed 1941. Dundalgan Press (W Tempest) Ltd, Dundalk, 1986. *Castles in Ireland. McNeill, T. Routledge, London, 1997. *The Noble Dwellings of Ireland. Mills, JF. Thames & Hudson, London, 1987.

External links

Kilclief Castle
- official site at

Northern Ireland Environment Agency The Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) is an executive agency within the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA). It is responsible for conservation of Northern Ireland's environment and natural heritage. Ori ...