Rewind – Kingswood Castle
By Sean Heffernan
With Tallaght and Clondalkin Village festivals due to take place soon, for this week's piece we are looking at a place that is straddled at the half way point between both areas.
As one drives along the M50, looking slightly to the left as they prepare to travel up the exit to the Naas Road, you might spot what seems to be a rather big bush, jutting up over the barrier wall that separates the LUAS from the motorway.
Kingswood Castle
However, this is no mere bush of exceptional growth, as a close look on Google Street View will attest.
It is in fact the ruins of an ancient castle that first appears on a map in 1621, which was put together by John Rocque.
He was a famous map maker of the 16th century, and the son of French Huguenot immigrants who fled to England to avoid persecution back home, when he was very young.
Prior to coming to Dublin he had produced extensive maps of areas of the UK, and his 24 sheet map of London – by far the most extensive and detailed survey of the British Capital up to that point – brought him to the attention of the Frederick, the Prince of Wales, who appointed him official cartographer (map designer) of the Royal Court.
Thus he now had access to almost unlimited funds, and travelled all over the country putting together maps of various other towns.
In 1756, the French immigrant arrived in Dublin, and in two years put together a detailed six page map of the Irish capital, which he called “Exact surveys of the city and Dublin”.
One of the things shown on his map was Kingswood Castle. And it appears to have seen further significant development from the site shown on the 1621 map.
In the early 1980’s and late 1990’s, excavations that took place around the site of what was the castle, showed evidence of settlement there from Celtic times, with what distinctly looked like a Souterrain (An Iron-age underground settlement), unearthed in their excavations.
In 1621 it is said that the Grand Surveyor of Ireland, Sir William Parsons was gifted the lands in the new townland of Ballymount by James I.
The county of Wicklow owes its creation to this vast landowner too, and he was also the lead instigator of the infamous plantations in Ulster, which saw Gaelic Chieftains forcefully disposed of their lands, which were handed over to Scottish settlers.
He also held the deeds to a large tract of lands which form the area we now know as Saggart.
At a later stage, Sir Parsons was to come into ownership of 1500 acres in Wexford, 800 in Leitrim. And over 3000 acres in various giant holdings in Ulster.
Various documents that have been unearthed over the years show that Ballymount Castle was selected to be the Dublin Manor House of the eminent surveyor, but when war broke out with Cromwell, he fled back to England, leaving his unfinished estate behind him.
Kingswood Castle as it stand today
The part built estate lay dormant until 1689, when William of Orange conferred the lands to one Richard Coote of Colooney, an area that is just south of Sligo town.
The Coote family held title to the lands until the early 1800’s when his cousin Charles, then owner of the lands, passed away leaving no heir.
It is not known at that point who directly owned the lands, but there are registers citing various persons having taken lease of the lands where the castle once stood.
Whilst Kingswood Castle is now all but gone, with only a mere small section of wall remaining of it, its name still resonates around the area.
There is a road in the nearby estate named after it, as is the local football team.
As was mentioned in this paper 12 months ago, there are plans to build 15 houses near the site of the ruins, in what is known as Ballymount Park.
So when you are next sitting on a LUAS that has just exited the Kingswood stop on its way into town, why not have a good look out the window, and see if you too can spot the apparent clump of bushes, that actually hides part of a building that like so many around this country, holds many secrets and has witnessed copious amounts if intrigue over the centuries.
