Fort of Maryborough

Fortification in Laois, Ireland, dating from 1550–1580

A square walled fort, built c. 1560, on rising ground south-west of the river Triogue, its outline enclosing about one hectare. It substantially survives and standing sections include most of the north and east walls and portions of the west and south wall with an impressive round bastion to the north-east corner. It is built of limestone rubble with a pronounced batter to the north wall, bastion and particularly evident on the shortened and rendered sections at the junction of Church Street and Railway Street. The round bastion is twelve metres in diameter, one and a half metres thick at the base and one metre at the top. A square tower at the south-west corner, illustrated in the late eighteenth-century views, no longer survives. The entrance was in the west wall, in the portion now missing along Railway Street. There is map evidence that there were substantial earthen ramparts inside the walls providing defence against artillery and a fighting platform. Its function as a fort was relatively short lived, the interior and possibly part of the defensive walls were dismantled by Colonel John Hewson in 1652-3 at the end of the Cromwellian wars. A 1721 map and the 1839 OS map indicate it contained barracks. New barracks were built to the south-west of Main Street in 1831. Gradually colonised during the course of the nineteenth and early twentieth-century, it is surrounded by the C

Type:
Fortification

Period:
1550–1580

Where:
Laois, Ireland

Coordinates:
53.04°N, 7.30°W

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