Gorteens Castle

[5] The castle was originally built upon lands acquired by Raymond FitzGerald, who died in the late 1100s.

The FitzGeralds[6] were the most powerful Norman-Irish aristocratic dynasty in medieval Ireland until the 1500s.

Gorteens was included in the Down Survey of Ireland in 1656 as being in the Baronys of Ida, Igrim or Ibercon and in the Parish of Rathpatricke.

[2] Following the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, FitzGerald forfeited Gorteens under the Cromwellian Settlement and was initially transplanted to Connaught in December 1653, before being assigned lands in Turlough and later in Carra, County Mayo by 1677.

[7] By 1670, the castle at Gorteens was reputedly in the hands of Samuel Skrimsheire or Skrimshaw, a Protestant.