Audley's Castle
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Audley's Castle, is a 15th century castle located near Strangford, County Down, Northern Ireland. It is a Tower house named after its 16th century owner, John Audley.
There are thousands of small stone towers similar to Audley's Castle in the Irish countryside; they are one of the commonest of archaeological sites, which tells us one thing: these were not buildings put up for the higher aristocracy, but for lesser lords and gentry. Most were built in the late Middle Ages (roughly 1350-1550). Audley's was built towards the end of this period. From written documents we may note the name of the family who owned it in a certain year but rarely anything else.
Audley's Castle consists of a tower set within a yard (technically known as a bawn) which is enclosed by a thin wall, with a simple gate. The door of the tower is guarded by a high arch stretching between two turrets. Men on the roof level could drop things, usually rocks, from behind this arch on to anyone standing outside the door below.
The tower has one main room on each floor, with one or two subsidiary rooms off each of the big ones. The ground floor has small windows and no fireplace or latrine and was for storage of provisions. The first floor has better windows, a large fireplace and access to a latrine; this was a room for the owner to live in and entertain his friends. It also has a chute for throwing dirty water away, so the large fireplace was also probably used for cooking on. The second floor was probably the lord’s private room for sleeping and his family life: servants and others could be accommodated in the attic.
There is very little historical information about the buildings in the small courtyard around Audley’s. Only a minority of towers had courtyard walls at all, and their buildings were clearly less importance than the tower.
These towers are different from castles of the great lords, which had large halls for public events and a number of different rooms for the members of their large households. The towers in different parts of the country vary, with distinct regional patterns. Audley’s with its two turrets linked by an arch is one of a type found in County Down only. Further south, in the Pale, the towers often have two or more turrets but they do not guard the door like those at Audley’s. In Munster, they have an elaborate display of roof-level defences which, on examination, are barely workable, while the number of rooms is greater than those of County Down. The main point was not defence, but to give the free holding gentry of comparatively modest resources comfortable and impressive places to live in, literally towering above their lands and peasants.
