Sketrick Castle is a castle situated on Sketrick Island near Whiterock,

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 ...

. 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 (; Ulster-Scots: ''toonlann'') is a traditional small land division used in Ireland and in the Western Isles of Scotland, typically covering . The townland system is of medieval Gaelic origin, predating the Norman invasion, and mo ...

of Sketrick Island, in the Ards and North Down Borough, located at grid reference: 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'' () or the ''Annals of the Four Masters'' () are chronicles of Middle Ages, medieval Irish history. The entries span from the Genesis flood narrative, Deluge, dated as 2,242 Anno Mundi, years after crea ...

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 which was discovered in 1957. The door in the east wall was defended by a murder-hole. There were four rooms on the ground floor, with two ovens in the largest. 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 ...

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 s ...

wall to a chamber with a

corbel In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal keyed into and projecting from a wall to carry a wikt:superincumbent, bearing weight, a type of bracket (architecture), bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in t ...

over a fresh water spring. Parts of the bawn wall still survive to the north and east of the castle. The top floors are not intact, but the joist holes are partially visible still, and there would have been wooden floors on the upper levels. The castle previously guarded the causeway to the west of the island. The castle is free to visit.

References

{{Reflist Castles in County Down Ruined castles in Northern Ireland

History

Features

See also

References