Ardee Castle

Ardee Castle - Louthiana

Wright's perspective drawing of 'the Town-Castle of Atherdee', as he styles it, is one of the least satisfactory images in Louthiana (Bk. II, Plate XVII-XVIII). The decision to place the castle in a completely rural landscape, rather than in its true urban setting, was possibly based on aesthetic reasons. The unfortunate result not only gives us an image in which the scale seems wrong but also denies us a glimpse of what the adjoining buildings looked like in the mid-18th century.

Ardee Castle - Louthiana

Wright's perspective drawing of 'the Town-Castle of Atherdee', as he styles it, is one of the least satisfactory images in Louthiana (Bk. II, Plate XVII-XVIII). The decision to place the castle in a completely rural landscape, rather than in its true urban setting, was possibly based on aesthetic reasons. The unfortunate result not only gives us an image in which the scale seems wrong but also denies us a glimpse of what the adjoining buildings looked like in the mid-18th century.

Enlarge image

The town of Ardee is notably for many things, not least its two fine castles, 'Hatch's Castle' and ' The Courthouse'. As its name might suggest, the latter is the more imposing of the two, not least because of the way it dramatically projects out into the wide main street of the town.

Ardee Castle - Photo

Photograph of Ardee Castle alias 'The Courthouse' taken in the mid-1970s (from Buckley and Sweetman 1991, plate 192).

Ardee Castle - Photo

Photograph of Ardee Castle alias 'The Courthouse' taken in the mid-1970s (from Buckley and Sweetman 1991, plate 192).

Enlarge image

This castle underlines the ubiquity and adaptability of the Tower House form in late medieval Ireland (see Roodstown Castle for general details on this type of castle). For Tower Houses were built not only in the countryside but also in medieval towns. In urban settings, the Tower House usually sheds its surrounding bawn[*1], no doubt because of the pressures of space but probably also because of the presence of the communal 'town defences'. None the less, a recurrent feature of such tower houses is their strategic placing within the urban landscape. This suggests that many of them were sited not just to be imposing residences but also to contribute to communal defence.

' The Courthouse' is a splendid example of this duality in the role of the urban Tower House. Strategically placed at the junction of the main north-south street with the side street leadings towards Kells, it functioned not only as an imposing building but also as a key-point in the collective defence of the town.

Ardee Castle - Elevation and Section

Elevation and sectional view of Ardee Castle alias 'The Courthouse' (from Buckley and Sweetman 1991, Fig. 262). The interior layout, and indeed many of the windows, are modern and relate to the continued use of the castle as a public utility.

Ardee Castle - Elevation and Section

Elevation and sectional view of Ardee Castle alias 'The Courthouse' (from Buckley and Sweetman 1991, Fig. 262). The interior layout, and indeed many of the windows, are modern and relate to the continued use of the castle as a public utility.

Enlarge image

In this regard, Wright's drawing of 'the Town-Castle of Atherdee', as he styles it, show nothing of the castle's strategic placing (Louthiana, Bk. II, Plate XVII-XVIII). His only observation on it is equally off-beam, and is one of the few human asides in the whole work: 'here we found a poor old grey headed man, imprisoned for a Debt of six English Shillings, whom we released' (Bk. II, contents page).

[*1] See

Roodstown Castle

for a definition of the term 'bawn'