Sketrick Castle is a castle situated on Sketrick Island near

Whiterock Whiterock is a small village in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is within the townland of Killinakin, in the civil parish of Killinchy and historic barony of Dufferin, on the western shore of Strangford Lough, near to the village of Killi ...

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 531,665. It borders County Antrim to th ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label=Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. North ...

. The castle is estimated to date back to the 12th century. Sketrick Castle tower-house and the passage to spring are State Care Historic Monuments in the

townland A townland ( ga, baile fearainn; Ulster-Scots: ''toonlann'') is a small geographical division of land, historically and currently used in Ireland and in the Western Isles in Scotland, typically covering . The townland system is of Gaelic orig ...

of Sketrick Island, in the Ards and North Down Borough, at grid ref: J5245 6252.

History

The castle dates from the late 12th century. In the 14th century it was acquired by Sir Robert Savage. The

Annals of the Four Masters The ''Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland'' ( ga, Annála Ríoghachta Éireann) or the ''Annals of the Four Masters'' (''Annála na gCeithre Máistrí'') are chronicles of medieval In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or mediev ...

record the capture of the castle in 1470 by an army led by the O'Neill to assist the MacQuillans. They took the castle and it was given to MacQuillan for safe keeping. It was intact until 1896 when a storm demolished much of it.

Features

Sketrick Castle was originally 57 ft high, 51 ft long and 27 ft wide, four storeys high, with a boat bay and a stone subterranean passage discovered in 1957. It has

lintels 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 of w ...

running under the

bawn A bawn is the defensive wall surrounding an Irish tower house. It is the anglicised version of the Irish word ''bábhún'' (sometimes spelt ''badhún''), possibly meaning "cattle-stronghold" or "cattle-enclosure".See alternative traditional ...

wall to a chamber with a corbel over a fresh water spring. Parts of the bawn wall still survive to the north and east of the castle.

References

Castles in County Down Ruined castles in Northern Ireland {{Down-geo-stub

History

Features

See also

References