County: Kildare Site name: BARBARSTOWN CASTLE, Straffan
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 10:22 Licence number: —
Author: Finola O'Carroll
Site type: Castle - tower house
Period/Dating: Post Medieval (AD 1600-AD 1750)
ITM: E 693030m, N 731227m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.323119, -6.603582
The work was conducted intermittently in December 1995 and January 1996 and involved monitoring the foundation trenches for two extensions to the existing building, one extending the 19th-century section and another attached to the 17th-century part adjacent to the tower house. One feature only, a stone-built garden wall, came to light. This was clearly associated with the early 19th-century extension to the existing house and related to the creation of a garden by means of artificially building up the ground level to the east to the level of the building.
The artefacts present consisted of broken sherds of ceramics and glass, none more than 200 years old. As no artefactual or structural material relating to the medieval phase of the complex, or to any earlier phase, was detected, it seems reasonable to conclude that such traces may have been obliterated in the course of the 17th- and 19th-century additions. The soil profiles reveal that the tower house was built on a very slight rise of firm clay and coarse gravels and that the ground dropped away to the north-east, where it was either generally wetter or else demarcated by a stream.
Greenanstown, Stamullen, Co. Meath
