Site of Castle, Bridgetown South, Co. Wexford
Co. Wexford |
Masonry Castles
On a flat stretch of land in County Wexford, with the Bridgetown river flowing roughly 130 metres to the north, once stood a castle that witnessed centuries of Irish history before vanishing from the landscape in the 1830s.
The site, now marked only on old Ordnance Survey maps from 1839 and 1940, tells a story of changing fortunes and contested ownership during one of Ireland's most turbulent periods.
Records from the Civil Survey of 1654-6 reveal that William Browne of Mulrankin owned the castle and 60 acres at Bridgetown in 1640, though he'd mortgaged the property to Nicholas Rowe for £50. When the 1641 rebellion erupted, the castle became a flashpoint of local conflict; Nicholas Rowe and his wife Ursula occupied the fortress but found themselves robbed by the very Brownes who had previously owned it. The castle later became associated with the Keating family, according to Samuel Lewis writing in 1837, though the details of this connection remain unclear.
Today, visitors to the pasture land where the castle once stood will find no visible traces of the structure that John O'Donovan documented as being demolished in the 1830s. Archaeological investigations in 2006 and 2008 searched the surrounding area but uncovered no related materials, leaving only historical records and the nearby St David's Well, situated about 25 metres southeast of the former castle site, as reminders of this lost piece of Wexford's medieval heritage.
Ref: WX02526
04-Essential
Nearby Places
Visitor Notes
Added by
Pete F
Browne, B. and Whelan, K. 1987 The Browne families of Co. Wexford. In K. Whelan and W. Nolan (eds), Wexford: History and Society, 467-89. Dublin. Geography Publications.
Simington, R.C. (ed.) 1953 The Civil survey, AD 1654-1656. Vol. IX: county of Wexford. Dublin. Irish Manuscripts Commission.
Lewis, S. 1837 A topographical dictionary of Ireland, 2 vols. London. Lewis and Co.
Jeffrey, W.H. 1979 The castles of County Wexford. Typescript prepared by the Old Wexford Society, Ed. E. Culleton.
O’Neill, N. 2011 Bridgetown South. No archaeological significance. In I. Bennett (ed.), Excavations 2008: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland, 371, No. 1271. Dublin. Wordwell.
McLoughlin, C. 2009 Bridgetown, Medieval. In I. Bennett (ed.), Excavations 2006: summary accounts of archaeological excavations in Ireland, 552, No. 2091. Dublin. Wordwell.