County: Meath Site name: KILLEEN
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 38:12 Licence number: 96E0001
Author: Rosanne Meenan
Site type: Castle - tower house
Period/Dating: Multi-period
ITM: E 693130m, N 754821m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 53.535081, -6.595106
A fifteenth-century tower house forms the core of Killeen Castle, which had large extensions added on in the nineteenth century. The castle and estate are the subject of a planning application for a large conference centre, hotel, golf-course and housing. As part of the EIS, test-trenching was carried out in the vicinity of the castle to establish whether remains of an earlier castle or of outer defensive features associated with the tower house survive.
A test-pit at the base of the north-west angle tower showed that there was neither barter, plinth not foundation trench and that the tower seems to have been built here directly on boulder clay. Another pit at the north-east angle tower produced evidence for a slight footing.
Eight other test-trenches placed further out from the castle did not expose evidence for features associated with an earlier castle or the tower house. However, stone and brick features south of the castle were probably modern landscape and terracing features. A fine stone-built culvert was exposed on the north side of the castle, running eastwards to feed into a river.
Two small test-pits were dug on the east edge of the nearby graveyard as there is a steep scarp from the interior of the graveyard down to the present ground level to the east. The remains of a low, crudely built stone wall were exposed around the outer edge of the scarp, which may be on the line of the original enclosure of the medieval church. The date of this wall was not clear.
Roestown, Drumree, Co. Meath
