Ireland · Partial ruin
Jigginstown Castle
Jigginstown Castle is a ruined 17th-century red-brick house and National Monument near Naas, County Kildare, Ireland. Built in the late 1630s under Thomas Wentworth, it was intended as a royal lodging but was never completed and was damaged during the 1640s; the basement and ground floor survive as ruins today.
First raised
1630
Its prime
1639
Today
Partial ruin
As it stood in 1639
What Jigginstown Castle looked like in its prime.
A long, low rectilinear house built of red brick, with several tall rectangular brick stacks and regular vertical window and door openings along an extended façade. Much of the roofline would have been continuous with chimneys punctuating it; large stretches of wall connect the taller pier-like chimney sections. The building sits on a gentle grassy slope behind a low stone boundary wall, with mature trees close to the main block and pasture in the foreground.
Its story
The story of Jigginstown Castle.
Jigginstown was the project of Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the 1630s and in his time the most powerful figure in the country. He intended the great house near Naas as a place where the King — Charles I then reigned — could reside on royal visits to Ireland, and built it on the periphery of the Pale, the guarded district on the outskirts of Dublin.
It was one of the largest buildings in Ireland and the first constructed of red brick, said to have been imported from Holland; the plans provided for pavement and columns of Kilkenny marble. Strafford's downfall and execution for treason in 1641 meant the house was never completed, and it was largely destroyed during the civil strife of the 1640s.
According to Strafford's biographer Veronica Wedgwood the ruins were still visible in the 1950s, and the basement and ground floor of the red-brick shell stand to this day, protected as a National Monument.
Step inside
6 places to explore in 1639.
The record describes 6 distinct spots at Jigginstown Castle — including 2 interiors: ground-floor chamber interior, basement level. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and walk through every one — more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
Create History
Recreate Jigginstown Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1639 — a photoreal walk that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
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