Castle - tower house, Newcastle, Co. Meath
Co. Meath |
Tower Houses
In the mid-17th century, Henry Betagh was a substantial landowner in Newcastle, County Meath, holding 429 acres according to the Civil Survey of 1654-6.
The survey noted that amongst his holdings stood a 'ruinous castle', already in poor condition by that time. Whilst Henry also owned 132 acres in nearby Corbogg, it was other members of the Betagh family who controlled most of the parish lands, making them one of the dominant families in the area.
The castle itself has left little trace on modern maps; it doesn't appear on any Ordnance Survey editions, though a manuscript map held in the National Library of Ireland (ms: 21 F 14 (43)) does mark its location on a local rise in the landscape. Today, only a fragment remains: a single wall running approximately seven metres north to south, standing about two metres high and one and a half metres thick. At its northern end, there's a piece of what appears to be a curving tower, now incorporated into the western wall of a farm building.
Archaeological assessment suggests this surviving wall was likely the western side of a bawn, the defensive wall that would have enclosed the castle complex. The lack of any remaining architectural features makes it difficult to determine much about the original structure's design or date of construction, though its association with the Betagh family places it firmly within the medieval and early modern history of County Meath. The Archaeological Inventory of County Meath, first published in 1987 and revised in 2016, classifies the site as a tower house, the type of fortified residence favoured by Irish landowners from the 15th century onwards.