2002:0896 - CLONGOWES WOOD COLLEGE, Castlebrown/Clongowes, Kildare

A small excavation was conducted in the yard of the school buildings in Clongowes Wood College. The name Clongowes Wood comes from the hybrid Latin/Irish: silva, ‘the wood’, cluain, ‘the meadow’, gobha, ‘the smith’, i.e. ‘the wood of the meadow smith’. The townland is also named Castlebrown, after the Browne family, who bought the castle ‘in ruins’ in the late 17th century. The Jesuits bought Castlebrown in 1813 and founded Clongowes Wood College. The castle building is the earliest of a sequence of buildings at the school. It consists of a fortified house built between the late 16th and the mid-17th century. The fortified house may incorporate part of an earlier tower-house.

The excavation followed from monitoring during initial site-clearance works carried out by Bill Frazer (No. 895, Excavations 2002), who identified archaeological material at the site. The excavation revealed a boundary ditch oriented east–west through the castle yard, 12m from the fortified house. The ditch was the earliest feature found during the excavation; however, it has been dated only by its stratigraphic position at the site. The ditch runs under the kitchen block that abuts the late 18th-century expansion of Castlebrown by Thomas Wogan Browne in 1788. The kitchen range (which survives today) is illustrated on the first edition of the OS map (1837) and post-dates 1788, as the kitchen block abuts the Thomas Wogan Browne extension to the castle. It is very likely that the ditch was originally constructed as a boundary around the castle, and it is certainly at least 18th century in date. It may have formed the boundary around the fortified house.

Three walls were identified running north–south through the ditch. These have also been dated by their stratigraphic relationship with existing buildings. A substantial wall underlies the Refectory Hall (built in 1816 by the Jesuits). This proves that outbuildings existed on the site of the castle yard before the development of Clongowes Wood as a school and demonstrates that the castle yard has been the site of outbuildings (stables, outhouses etc.) from at least the 18th century. The identification of a well indicates the range of functions served from within the castle yard. The well is likely to date from at least the early 19th or the 18th century. A later culvert that was contemporary with the kitchen block was identified in the yard. The culvert drains into the kitchen building and possibly functioned as a water conduit.

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