County: Down Site name: KIRKISTOWN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: —
Author: N.F. Brannon, DoE
Site type: Castle - tower house
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 764516m, N 857999m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 54.443850, -5.463430
This is the site of a 17th-century tower house and bawn just inland on the Ards peninsula, reputedly built in 1622 by Roland Savage, with major alterations taking place in the 18th century and the more recent addition of buttresses and iron restraining belts.
Excavation revealed a 16cm-thick layer of building material in a sandy soil, probably decay and repair debris, mixed with 19th-century ceramics, glass and nails. This sealed a stony layer which, though archaeologically sterile, ran below the castle footings and filled a subsoil-cut hollow possibly paralleling those footings. The NE corner of the tower house sat on a single course of boulders, with smaller stones being used in the NW.
