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Due to its position just outside the Pale the castle was the site of numerous battles between English barons and Irish Chieftains. The castle was burned and demolished during one attack by Red Hugh O’Donnell when he was attacking castles in Leinster. During the reign of Elizabeth I the lands were granted to Henry Colley, a soldier who became a Knight in 1574. A lot of the major additions, including the four eye-catching chimney stacks and large mullioned windows, were added around this time. The house stayed in the Colley family for generations until a Richard Colley took the name Wesley after inheriting a relatives lands in Meath. Richard’s brother Henry Colley had only one child, a daughter named Mary who married Arthur Pomeroy, who became first Viscount Pomeroy 1791. It was believed that during the lifetime of this couple of the castle was finally abandoned as the Pomeroys had built New berry Hall nearby. The Duchas Schools Collection of 1937 has some great stories about the hill, legends of ghosts and large ‘hell-hounds’, the interventions of the ‘good people’, the skeletons of ‘huge men’ and even gold buried within the hill! The prominent position the castle holds overlooking such flat terrain as one finds in Kildare its not hard to see how this location would have always been strategically important.

GPS: 53.36157, -6.96905

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