Castle, Crosserdree, Co. Westmeath
Sitting atop a low rocky hillock in Crosserdree, County Westmeath, the remnants of what was once a castle tell a story of centuries past.
Castle, Crosserdree, Co. Westmeath
Though marked as a castle ruin on Larkin’s 1808 map of the county, the site curiously never appeared on any of the Ordnance Survey’s detailed 6-inch maps that followed. Today, visitors will find a rectangular area measuring 30 metres northwest to southeast and 15 metres northeast to southwest, partially overgrown with scrub and enclosed by a low bank of earth and stone. Several other low banks can be spotted in the surrounding area, hinting at the site’s former structures.
The hillock itself bears the scars of more recent history; its eastern face shows signs of quarrying, likely from the 19th century when stone was a valuable building material. Just 75 metres to the southeast stand Crosserdree church and its accompanying graveyard, both archaeological monuments in their own right. The surrounding landscape is rich with earthworks that speak to different periods of use: cultivation ridges and what might be an old watercourse can be traced in the field to the south, whilst a linear earthwork to the west may represent the remains of an ancient roadway, though its exact age remains uncertain.
Further evidence of quarrying activity can be found about 130 metres to the west, where rock outcrop shows clear signs of extraction. These various features, compiled by researchers Frank Coyne and Caimin O’Brien in 2018, paint a picture of a landscape that has been continuously shaped by human activity, from medieval fortification to agricultural use and industrial extraction, each layer adding to the complex archaeological story of this corner of Westmeath.