Mylerstown Castle, Mylerstown, Co. Kildare
At the northwestern foot of a long, gently sloping pasture in Mylerstown, County Kildare, the remains of a castle stand as a reminder of medieval power struggles in the region.
Mylerstown Castle, Mylerstown, Co. Kildare
The site, which Fitzgerald identified in the early 1900s as a former Bermingham stronghold, sits about 200 metres southeast of a medieval church and graveyard, creating a small cluster of historical monuments that speak to centuries of continuous occupation.
The castle ruins occupy a low, rectangular platform measuring approximately 30 metres northwest to southeast and 18 metres wide, rising just half a metre above the surrounding landscape. What remains today are two parallel sections of castle walling and associated collapsed masonry. The southwestern wall, though largely stripped of its facing stones by centuries of robbing, still stands 2.6 metres high and preserves two important architectural features: a doorway measuring 1.6 metres wide and a window embrasure that widens from 1.1 to 1.6 metres. Seven metres to the northeast, only the foundation course of an outer wall survives, marked by a three-metre stretch of facing stones.
The site is littered with substantial piles of collapsed mortared masonry; the largest heap measures 10 by 5 metres, with a smaller accumulation of displaced stonework about 10 metres to the northeast. Based on the surviving architectural evidence and layout, the structure was most likely a tower house, the fortified residence of choice for the Anglo-Norman and Gaelic aristocracy in late medieval Ireland. These compact, vertical castles provided both defence and domestic accommodation, perfectly suited to the unsettled conditions of the period.