Bawn, Piercefield, Co. Westmeath
Sitting on a gentle rise in the Westmeath grasslands, Piercefield Castle offers sweeping views from west to north across the surrounding countryside.
Bawn, Piercefield, Co. Westmeath
Today, visitors will find little more than a rectangular depression in the ground, measuring roughly 23 metres east to west and 10 metres north to south, its boundaries marked by low, grass-covered wall footings. This sunken area marks where the castle once stood, though a modern access road for a nearby sports field now cuts directly through the historic site.
The structure that once occupied this spot may have been a 17th-century fortified house rather than a medieval tower house, appearing on historic Ordnance Survey maps from the 19th and early 20th centuries as a rectangular building aligned east to west. Archaeological surveys from the 1960s and 1970s revealed that the castle site formed the northwest corner of a much larger levelled rectangular enclosure, measuring approximately 120 metres square, which likely represents the remains of a bawn; a defensive wall that would have surrounded and protected the main house and its immediate grounds, or possibly a walled garden associated with the estate.
Various earthworks still visible in the area hint at the site’s former significance, including a linear ditch that once ran westward from the castle’s western wall. The southern wall appears to have been lost to a quarry hole, whilst the rectangular field immediately north of the castle, clearly marked on 1837 maps, had vanished from later surveys by 1911. Despite its current modest appearance as a grassy depression, Piercefield Castle remains an intriguing remnant of Ireland’s complex layers of fortified domestic architecture, where the distinction between medieval castle and early modern fortified house often blurs.