The Black Castle, Leighlinbridge, Co Carlow – ruin
Not in Bence-Jones
http://irishantiquities.bravehost.com/carlow/leighlinbridge/leighlinbridge.html
Map reference: S692652 (2692, 1652)
A castle was erected in 1320 the control the bridge at Leighlinbridge. The remains today are mainly of 16th century date and consist of a rectangular tower with the SW corner collapsed.
The castle appears to be five storeys high. The ground floor is now only a half storey above present ground level. There is a vault over the first floor. At the top floor there are traces of a mural passage on all sides.
At the eastern wall there is a machicolation which guarded the entrance.
In the adjoining garden there are fragments of a bawn wall with defensive loops. Hugh deLacy may have built a castle on this site in 1180 but it was superseded by a Carmellite friary in 1260. the present structure is said to have been built by Sir Edward Bellingham in 1547. Leighlinbridge was captured by Cromwellian forces under Colonel Hewson in 1650.
In the Black
The Black Castle in Leighlinbridge, County Carlow. The first fortification here was constructed in 1181 on the orders of Anglo-Norman knight Hugh de Lacy to defend a crucial crossing point on the river Barrow (the first bridge followed in the early 14th century). When the Carmelite order came to Ireland in the 1270s, a friary was established adjacent to the castle and it survived until the suppression of all such religious houses in 1540s when the property passed into the hands of Sir Edward Bellingham, Lord Deputy of Ireland. It appears he was responsible for building what stands today, a 16th century three-storey tower house. Badly damaged during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s/50s, the Black Castle thereafter fell into ruin, the south-west corner tumbling down in the late 19th century.
Irish Historic Houses 