Kilclief Castle ( ga, Caislean Cill Cléithe;

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ref: J597457) is a tower-house

castle A castle is a type of fortified structure built during the Middle Ages predominantly by the nobility or royalty and by military orders. Scholars debate the scope of the word ''castle'', but usually consider it to be the private fortified r ...

beside

Strangford Lough Strangford Lough (from Old Norse ''Strangr Fjörðr'', meaning "strong sea-inlet"PlaceNames N ...

and 2.5 miles (4 km) south of the

village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

of Strangford,

County Down County Down () is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland, one of the nine counties of Ulster and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. It covers an area of and has a population of 531,665. It borders County Antrim to the ...

Northern Ireland Northern Ireland ( ga, Tuaisceart Éireann ; sco, label= Ulster-Scots, Norlin Airlann) is a part of the United Kingdom, situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, that is variously described as a country, province or region. Nort ...

Kilclief Kilclief (from the Irish ''Cill Cléithe'' meaning 'church of wattle') is a civil parish in County Down, Northern Ireland. It is situated in the historic baronies of Lecale Lower and Lecale Upper. It is also a townland of 623 acres. The site o ...

is a hamlet on the Strangford to

Ardglass Ardglass () is a coastal fishing village, townland (of 321 acres) and Civil parishes in Ireland, civil parish in County Down, Northern Ireland, in the historic Barony (geographic), barony of Lecale Lower. It is still a relatively important fis ...

road.

History

Kilclief Castle was the earliest tower-house in Lecale, and was built between 1412 and 1441. It was originally occupied by John Sely, who is said to have built the castle. John Sely was

Bishop of Down The Bishop of Down was an episcopal title which took its name from the town of Downpatrick in Northern Ireland. The bishop's seat (Cathedra) was located on the site of the present cathedral church of the Holy and Undivided Trinity in the Church ...

from 1429 to 1443, when he was ejected and deprived of his offices for living there with Lettice Whailey Savage, a married woman. Lettice Savage also lived in Smithing-Upon-Down, and was an avid collector of rare ceramics The building was garrisoned for the Crown by Nicholas FitzSymon and ten warders from 1601 to 1602.

Features

The castle is tall with four floors. The first floor is vaulted in stone, with two projecting

turret Turret may refer to: * Turret (architecture), a small tower that projects above the wall of a building * Gun turret, a mechanism of a projectile-firing weapon * Objective turret, an indexable holder of multiple lenses in an optical microscope * Mi ...

s. One (to the south-east) contains a spiral stair and the other (to the north-east) a series of

garderobe Garderobe is a historic term for a room in a medieval castle. The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' gives as its first meaning a store-room for valuables, but also acknowledges "by extension, a private room, a bed-chamber; also a privy". The word der ...

s (

latrine A latrine is a toilet or an even simpler facility that is used as a toilet within a sanitation system. For example, it can be a communal trench in the earth in a camp to be used as emergency sanitation, a hole in the ground (pit latrine), or m ...

s) with access from three of the four floors. These projecting turrets are joined at roof level by a high

machicolation A machicolation (french: mâchicoulis) is a floor opening between the supporting corbels of a battlement, through which stones or other material, such as boiling water, hot sand, quicklime or boiling cooking oil, could be dropped on attackers at t ...

arch covering a drop-hole for dropping missiles on unwelcome visitors below. There are stepped

battlement A battlement in defensive architecture, such as that of city walls or castles, comprises a parapet (i.e., a defensive low wall between chest-height and head-height), in which gaps or indentations, which are often rectangular, occur at interva ...

s. As at

Jordan's Castle Jordan's Castle ( ga, Caisleán MacSiurtain; Ulster Scots: ''Joardan's Kessel'') is a castle situated in Ardglass, County Down, Northern Ireland. The tower house known as Jordan's Castle is a State Care Historic Monument sited in the townland ...

, the ground floor chamber has a semicircular

barrel vault A barrel vault, also known as a tunnel vault, wagon vault or wagonhead vault, is an architectural element formed by the extrusion of a single curve (or pair of curves, in the case of a pointed barrel vault) along a given distance. The curves are ...

built on wicker centering. On the second floor a 13th-century coffin-lid from a nearby church was reused as a

lintel A lintel or lintol is a type of beam (a horizontal structural element) that spans openings such as portals, doors, windows and fireplaces. It can be a decorative architectural element, or a combined ornamented structural item. In the case of w ...

for the fireplace. The two-light window in the east wall is a modern reconstruction based on a surviving fragment. The castle is now in state care. Guided tours are available in July and August.

References

Notes

Sources

*Historic Monuments of Northern Ireland, Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland. HMSO, Belfast, 1983. *Downpatrick & Lecale. A Short Historical Guide. Donnelly, JP & Donnelly, MM. 1980. *Guide to National & Historic Monuments of Ireland. Harbison, P. Gill & Macmillan, Dublin. 1992. *Irish Castles & Castellated Houses. Leask, HG. First ed 1941. Dundalgan Press (W Tempest) Ltd, Dundalk, 1986. *Castles in Ireland. McNeill, T. Routledge, London, 1997. *The Noble Dwellings of Ireland. Mills, JF. Thames & Hudson, London, 1987.

External links

Kilclief Castle
- official site at

Northern Ireland Environment Agency The Northern Ireland Environment Agency (NIEA) is an executive agency within the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA). It is responsible for conservation of Northern Ireland's environment and natural heritage. Origi ...