Fanningstown Castle

In the late twelfth and early thirteenth century the invading Anglo-Normans identified the strategic importance of the Maigue, and gradually established a series of fortresses along its western shore, some a rebuilding of existing forts. An early castle was built at Newtown near the mouth of the river, another near the ford at Croom by 1215 when it was granted to Maurice Fitzgerald, an old fort at Adare was walled, and by 1280 there was a castle on raised ground near a bridging point on the river at Castleroberts.

There was a castle at Fanningstown by 1285. Situated a few miles from the bank of the river behind Castleroberts Fanningstown seems to have been part of a second line of defence. It is difficult to date the remaining castle ruins which consist of a small, almost square chamber without upper floors or roof, and a round staircase tower which, pierced with arrow-slit windows, rises about three floors, but from which the staircase and roof have been removed.

There is the remains of a bartizan (a turret corbelled out from the wall on cut stone corbels, used for defence) on the west corner. This castle was incorporated into one corner of a battlemented bawn wall which enclosed a large courtyard.

It is possible that the other three corners were given towers or the external appearance of towers. There is one of the latter on the NE corner, surmounted by double battlements which are typical of Irish medieval castellated architecture. It could be a nineteenth-century addition, like the one on the NE corner which was incorporated into the new house, of which more later.

The difficulty in dating Irish castles for which there is little documentary record derives from the fact that architectural features are unreliable as a source. Medieval castellated styles tended to be simple and conservative, stone work varied little over the centuries, attacks often left the structures badly damaged or ruined. However, the small size of Fanningstown Castle suggests that this is the ground plan of an unimportant, probably primarily defensive structure. In possession of the Norman Maurice family by 1285, along with the castle at Adare, Fanningstown castle and the cantred of which it was a part, and into which English and Welsh settlers may well have been introduced, were an integral part of the Norman feudal system.

A seventeenth-century description of Fanningstown draws attention to a single plowland, a thatched house, and an orchard. These could have sustained a steward charged with the upkeep of the castle. They might well have lain safely within the bawn walls, though it is not impossible that the present extensive walled orchard adjacent to the bawn could have had a seventeenth-century or earlier origin.

While Fanningstown lingered as a defensive outpost Adare Castle expanded, acquiring a massive stone keep, separate hall, stables, kitchen, dungeon, portcullis, all of which are being currently restored. Croom Castle too grew, becoming the principal seat of the Earl of Kildare. The castle, renovated in the nineteenth century is still inhabited.