Built in the environs of the site of a 12th-century Cistercian abbey, Bagenal’s Castle is an early example of a fortified house, a type of residential building favoured by the gentry in Ireland and Scotland in the late 16th and early 17th centuries. Original drawings from a survey of the Castle completed c.1568 show that the Castle originally had a projecting stair turret and latrine turret, thus embracing elements of both a 16th-century fortified house and a medieval tower-house. The drawings also show that the building had three storeys with an attic. Documentary evidence from the early 17th century also indicates that the Castle was surrounded by a bawn (a walled enclosure containing outbuildings) as well as a garden and an orchard.
Bagenal’s Castle was built by Sir Nicholas Bagenal, an English settler from Staffordshire, who was granted the site of the Cistercian abbey at Newry and its confiscated estates, along with land at Greencastle and Carlingford, by King Edward VI in 1552. Although some ruins of the abbey are recorded to have been standing in the 18th century and local tradition claimed that Bagenal refurbished the abbot’s house, archaeological investigations carried out during restoration of the building did not find any indication of the re-use of an earlier structure. The building is marked on Robert Lythe’s map of Newry, dating from c.1568, as the ‘New Castell’.
After the death of Sir Nicholas Bagenal in 1590 the Castle was inherited by his son, Henry, and then by his grandson, Arthur. Although Bagenal’s Castle was attacked during the 1641 Rebellion, we know little of its history in the 17th century and how far the Bagenals maintained it as a major residence. On the death in 1712 of Nicholas Bagenal (great-grandson of Sir Nicholas Bagenal) his county Down estates, including the town of Newry, passed to his kinsman, Robert Nedham who leased the Castle in 1746 to Robert Hutcheson, a Newry merchant. This lease may have initiated significant alterations to the original Castle structure. A cellar and steps on the ground floor, which were discovered during archaeological excavations, may date from this period and it is possible that the stair and latrine turret were demolished at this time. Subsequent to this lease the Castle was converted into two dwelling houses which are mentioned in the Ordnance Survey Memoirs of 1834-6. The Memoirs also describe fragments of carved stones from the abbey buildings which had been reused in surrounding buildings.
The warehouse adjoining Bagenal’s Castle on the north side was added in the 1830s and was used by Joseph Doyle, a seed merchant. In 1894 the complex became the home of Arthur McCann Limited and functioned as a bakery until the mid-1990s. During this period of ownership by McCann’s Bakery, Bagenal’s Castle underwent substantial alterations and changes to its structure.
Up until the 1930s the structure of the Castle was still visible along with some original features but development of the site after World War II enveloped the Castle, hiding it from view. In the course of these building works, various artefacts of archaeological interest from the medieval abbey were found including human bones, a headless effigy of a knight in armour which was re-buried, a granite carving of a human head and heraldic animal which was set into the outside walls, and later moved inside the bakery and a rough-hewn holy water font was removed from the grounds to the local Dominican Church.
The celebrated Archaeological Survey of County Down, published in 1966, states that the Castle had long been destroyed even though knowledge of the building's historical significance had passed down through several generations of employees at McCann's Bakery. It wasn't until the Bakery had been sold that the Castle was rediscovered by the Curator of Newry and Mourne Museum. The Northern Ireland Environment Agency then scheduled the Castle as a Scheduled Monument and the site was purchased by the then Newry and Mourne District Council and restored as a new home for Newry and Mourne Museum.
During restoration many of the features depicted on the 16th century drawings were found to be still extant. These include a corbel which once supported the box machicolation over the entrance to the building, window sills and jambs, some with the original glazing-bar holes, ventilation loops and a bread oven in the kitchen fireplace. A section of 13th century roll moulding was also found to have been re-used in one of the walls.
These features and others are now presented to the public and interpreted in Bagenal’s Castle, a building which, in many ways, is a palimpsest for the history of Newry.
