Cheeverstown Castle, Cheeverstown, Co. Dublin
Cheeverstown Castle once stood on the flat, low-lying ground west of Belgard Hill in County Dublin, though you won't find any trace of it today.
Cheeverstown Castle, Cheeverstown, Co. Dublin
The tower house was demolished sometime between the late 1970s and early 1980s, erasing a structure that had likely stood for centuries. Before its destruction, it was a modest but solid example of Irish tower house architecture; a square building measuring about seven metres on each side, rising three storeys high.
The castle’s design was typical of medieval Irish fortifications, with a vaulted ceiling over the ground floor that would have provided both strength and fire resistance. Natural light filtered through narrow slit loops, those distinctive thin windows that served the dual purpose of illumination and defence. The main entrance faced west, opening onto what historical records suggest was once a small bawn, or fortified enclosure. According to nineteenth-century antiquarian McDix, who documented the site in 1897, there were also faint traces of this defensive wall and a well located to the west of the main tower.
Today, the site offers nothing to the casual observer; no romantic ruins or crumbling walls mark where Cheeverstown Castle once stood. Its complete erasure from the landscape serves as a reminder of how much of Ireland’s built heritage was lost during the rapid development of the late twentieth century, when many historic structures were swept away in favour of modernisation. The castle’s memory now exists only in historical records and the work of antiquarians who documented these places before they vanished entirely.