Drimnagh Castle

The earliest recorded owner of Drimnagh was Sir Hugh de Bernival, whose name appears in state papers relating to Ireland in 1216. His family held the place for centuries, their name settling into the later spellings Barnewell and Barnewall. The fortification they first raised here belongs to the mid-13th century, but the main surviving buildings are later: a great hall of the 15th century with a tower of the 16th or 17th century attached to it. Those buildings sit inside a moat fed by a tributary of the Camac; Drimnagh is the only remaining castle in Ireland with a flooded moat around it.

By the middle of the 19th century Drimnagh belonged to the Marquess of Lansdowne. Samuel Lewis, in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland printed in 1837, set it down as an "irregular pile", the "property of the Marquess of Lansdowne [..] occupied by Mr. E. Cavanagh".

In the very early 20th century the castle and its lands were bought by Joseph Hatch, born 1851, a dairy man of 6 Lower Leeson Street who sat on Dublin City Council for Fitzwilliam Ward from 1895 to 1907. He bought Drimnagh in the early 1900s to provide grazing land for his cattle, and restored it. The castle became a summer home for his family, and the setting for the silver wedding anniversary of Joseph and his wife Mary Connell and for the marriage of their eldest daughter Mary in 1910.

Joseph Hatch died in April 1918 and the castle passed to his eldest son Joseph Aloysius, born 1882 and known as Louis, who ran the dairy farm and the Lower Leeson Street shop with his brother Hugh. Hugh married at the age of 60 in 1944 and died in 1950; Louis, who never married, died in December 1951. The family occupied the castle until the mid-1950s. Louis left it to Dr P. Dunne, Bishop of Nara, who sold it, reportedly for a nominal sum, to the Christian Brothers to build the school that stands beside it. The Brothers lived and ran a school there until 1956, when they moved to their new schools and monastery close by.

There is also a large stone building of the early 20th century on the site, used at different times as a stable, a ballroom and a coach house.

In 1978 the local An Caisleán Gaelic Athletic Association club, now St James Gaels, took possession of the coach house and renovated it into a clubhouse with hall, kitchen and changing rooms with adjoining showers. The castle itself was a ruin by the mid-1980s, its roofs fallen, its windows missing and its masonry partly collapsed.

In 1986 Peter Pearson, an artist working with An Taisce, the national trust for Ireland, set up a local committee and brought in FÁS, the state training authority, for a conservation and restoration programme. All the work was carried out by hand: a medieval oak roof in 15th-century style over the great hall, mullioned stone windows, lime mortars for building and plastering, and wood carving in oak. A formal garden in medieval style was laid out as well. Drimnagh re-opened to the public in 1991, with further restoration running through the 1990s. Film and television crews have worked here since, among them The Abduction Club in 2002, Ella Enchanted in 2004 and The Tudors in 2007. As of 2019 the castle offered tours to the public, could be hired as a venue for weddings and other events, and ran dry stone walling courses.