Bawn, Sandfordscourt, Co. Kilkenny
In the rolling grasslands of Sandfordscourt, County Kilkenny, a weathered tower house known as Cantwell's Castle stands as a reminder of Ireland's turbulent medieval past.
Bawn, Sandfordscourt, Co. Kilkenny
The castle sits atop a low earthen mound, approximately 48 metres north to south and 41 metres east to west, offering commanding views across the countryside in most directions, though a small hill to the south blocks the vista. The tower house forms part of a larger fortified complex that once included a bawn; a defensive walled courtyard typical of Irish fortifications from the 16th and 17th centuries.
The bawn’s original rectangular footprint, measuring roughly 37 metres northeast to southwest and 40 metres northwest to southeast, can still be traced on the ground, though much of it has vanished over the centuries. Today, only fragments of the defensive walls remain standing: the northwest wall stretches for about 27 metres from the tower house, whilst shorter sections survive at the north angle and extending from the south angle. These surviving walls, built to a thickness of 0.8 metres, now stand barely a metre high in most places and are covered in grass, reaching their original height only where they meet the tower house itself. A five-metre gap breaks the northwest wall, perhaps marking an original entrance or later damage.
According to local historian William Carrigan, writing in 1905, the bawn and its associated buildings remained intact until the late 18th century, when a farmer named Thomas Cahill dismantled them, presumably using the stone for other construction projects; a common fate for many of Ireland’s medieval structures. The first edition Ordnance Survey maps from the mid-19th century still showed the complete circuit of the bawn walls as dashed lines, suggesting that their foundations or low remnants were visible even decades after their demolition, preserving the ghost of this once-formidable defensive complex in the landscape.





