Ballycowan Castle

The plan of the ruined complex is L-shaped, reflecting its development as a fortified residence with later additions. Surviving structural fabric consists of the remains of the principal domestic ranges and associated outbuildings, and a number of chimney stacks that indicate where living and service rooms once stood. The residential ranges date to the late sixteenth century work of Thomas Morres, while the adjoining tower is associated with the 1626 construction by Sir Jasper Herbert and his wife.

The gable or fronton of the ruins preserves a carved heraldic device associated with Jasper Herbert, and an inscribed panel records the builders and the year of that phase of work; the inscription states that Sir Jasper Herbert and Mary Din Finglas built the house in 1626. Evidence of a former enclosing defensive wall is recorded for the site, but the surviving landscape now presents the castle as a series of ruinous ranges rather than a complete circuit. Adjacent to the castle stands the ruin of an ancient church, its remains lying close to the domestic structures and contributing to the site’s historic setting.

Damage incurred during mid-seventeenth century warfare is physically legible in the masonry, most notably at the castle’s southern extremity, which was demolished in an explosion that contemporary records place at about one hundred yards (ninety metres) distance on a nearby rise. Today the castle survives as fragmentary walls, chimneys, and masonry ranges, the carved coat of arms and the dated inscription remaining among the clearest in situ indicators of the site’s early seventeenth-century phase.