Donore Castle, Co. Meath

The small tower house of Donore may have been built with the premium of £10 that the Government - alarmed by the frequent incursions of Gaelic lords - offered in 1429 to "every liege man" in the Pale who would build "a castle or tower sufficiently embattled or fortified within the next ten years to wit 20 feet in length 16 feet in width and 40 feet in height or more". The inside measurements and height of this simple three-storey rectangular tower certainly meet those requirements. Typically, its lower storeys are vaulted, while it has double-splayed basement loops, a box-machicolation above the ground floor entrance, mural latrine chambers, rounded external corners and a projecting tower at the south-west corner containing the stair.

The little castle came to a very sad end. After it was captured in 1650, the occupants at the time - James, son of MacGeoghegan, and over forty members of his household, including women and children - were all put to death by the Cromwellian general John Reynolds.

Located 8 miles SW of Trim on the Kinnegad Road (T26),
about half a mile W of Inchamore Bridge.
NGR: N 702497. National Monument.
Key obtainable from the cottage opposite.

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