Welcome I hope find everything you wanted to know about Newry Co Downs, Newry Castle, its history and much more !  To understand and appreciate the Newry Castle History "properly"  is I feel far too much for any one person to take in in a month of Sundays.  Sadly in 1973 the remnants of Newry Castle were knocked down by Newry & Mourne council as part of a plan which you will gather was a very clever one as you read these pages.  To fill you in in short however they have used the old English ways of doing things, wipe out the building and distort the real history & its too late for you or me to grumble or do anything thing about it. They accomplished it to a certain degree, but fortunately theres allways some one or something that blocks the way and or records the real truth, I just happen to be one of them !!    Their  knocking down was supposedly done blind, but if you take your time and look at the money aspect of all that happened at that period and the sweet 2.5 million they got lately & study carefully what has been happening in the place since Newry Castle (Converys shoe repair shop) was demolished I think you will find as I have, that Newry Council seems to think that Newry needs that continuity of the English presence In this most ancient Irish town & Tara to survive.  I can tell you now along with all thats going on at the moment behind the sceens and the ancient history of Newry Castle you need plenty of patience & spare time to understand properly what our Council advocate and are really at.  There really are too many hidden secrets for all to be as sweet as our council would have us believe,  many factors have been omitted and or altered by the droves that have written about the place, the biggest lot by the Council them selves and all In my reckoning in the quest of money.   Did you know that Edward the Bruce attacked & basically destroyed Newry Castle in 1315, all but the four walls were left standing, the Castle lay in ruins for some time as Newry was ravaged by wars.  Nicholas Bagenal did with out a doubt rebuild Newry Castle, (but this Castle is not to be confused with the Fake Bagenal Castle that stands today) during the time he spent restoring it he used the Cistercian Abbots house at the top of Hyde market as a billet, what happened to the Abbot at this time one has to wonder.  However Bagenals stay at the Castle wasnt a long one due to an attack by Shane O Neill in 1566, when he left Bagenal homeless or should I say Castless,  ahhhh, !! this news picked from History books by the Ireland guide 2nd edition, page 546, & also from O Falloins history of Ireland & too many other numerous books to mention.  Anyway I can say with the greatest of ease that the Newryabbey Castle history journey is one of the most interesting and gripping experience's open to Newry people today, & if you thought the story of the Holy Grail was good, you are in for a treat in these pages.   When you read the reality of just whats going on in the place or inside the walls of this Newryabbey Castle so to speak and the goal thats trying to be achieved by a very large body of now very red faced people, by jasus yer hair curl.   While there is no way that I can possibly cover all the episodes of the ancient town's Tara History & all else since or before & or perhaps every wee family juicy bit to suit everyone, I will do my best.  I hope (over time) to make this web site more than attractive to the many people who seek the good honest truth about Newry Castle & the redefining of the towns history in 1996, where in Newry & Mourne Council's & the Ulster  Archaeological Society were seen to squander a one and a half million pounds sterling Lottery grant, along with a million of rate payers money telling lies about a Castle that never existed & indeed going as far as totally fabricating & constructing a false Castle one using our most ancient Abbey building the (Newry medieval Cistercian Church) and distorting Newry's real historicaly documented history, to the point were it will take years to fix. 

The Newries or Newry as we call it todays is an ancient institution and it was one of the class cf monasteries in the Ulster Ulaidh (Land of the Ulaidh) which combined educational pursuits with the monastic discipline.  A few years after the arrival of the English.  When Ulster was granted to John De Courcey on the condition of conquering it, he over ran the best part of it erecting as many castles as he could to secure his other many precarious ac- quisitions . The Newryabbey name at this time appears as belonging to the property of the see of Down with which de Courcy in 1179 takes the liberty of making it over as an affiliation to the monks of  English Abbey's, when indeed the abbey was restored under a new aspect. 

Newry Castle was like many of De Courcys Castles, a converted Abbey building & it stood as the stories tell at the corner of the top of Mill Street and or at the junction of Castle Street (formerly boat street) & upper North Street.  The Castle building is seen as the largest building in the top center of our map, which is to your right at the top of the page , please note that there is no monastic cross above it.  If you click the picture for a larger view & look closely at some of the other Abbey buildings, & in particular at those beneath St Patricks church on the hill, these are the 2 buildings which became Mc Canns 2nd Bakery(properly titled they are the Great Newry Church of the Blessed Virgin, (sadly nopw corupted and savaged into being a Castle of Bagenal which never existed.  3 of the building in the map are Castleated, two of these are Churches and the typical map makers cross can be seen over both of them.  Castellated means in short, i.e with battlements ( crenels , crenelles ) a castellated building is one with battlements, turrets & or in the shape of towers to thier fronts.  De Courcy made a point of protecting the master buildings in his Abbey foundations, it made for good sence to add battlement and towers.  The largest and closest to you church building on the map at the  lower end, with a cross above it, is as said St Patricks church High Street, part of the tower of which exists from the Patrician Abbey of Newry period, this part tower being the oldest standing structure in Newry. 

 It is very improbable that there was any castle in Ireland before the supposed Anglo-Norman conquest of Ireland in 1169.  In Ireland the clan system was still the done thing at the time the Normans arrived ; consequently it is very unlikely that any castle existed here. Giraldus Cambrensis states that the Irish did not use castles, and no mention is made of them in the history of the supposed conquest.  I think its better at this stage to enlighten you upon the meaning of the word Castle.  The word is now definetly accepted as meaning "a private fortification", as distinct from a fortification suitable for the protection of a tribe, clan, or town.  Many people are confused by the use of the words castel or castellum in ancient documents, they are simplly diminutives of castrum, which in Saxon times, according to (MJ Browns 1912 ballad Poetry of Ireland) was when the great Saxon Prince Alfrid, who soon afterwards became the King of Northumberia stayed at Newry College according to Ven, Bede about the year of 684, during which time he wrote a very long poem ( Prince Alfred's  Itinerary through Ireland) It mentioned Newrys rushing waters.  Castrum was used to describe a walled town, or a town defended by earthen ramparts.  The earliest mention & or type of private or personal castle in western Europe was the Norman matte.  A Dr. Sophus Muller says that those found in Denmark are the oldest personal castles anywhere in the world-and that they are the result of the genuine Middle-age phenomenon which came about with the new relation of society which was then everywhere forming. Personal castles are first mentioned in Europe early in the 11th century. The Normans were among the earliest to change from the clan to the feudal system, and with the change came the castle in its earliest form-the matte. 

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