Ireland · Restored
Narrow Water Castle
Narrow Water Castle is a 16th-century Irish tower house and adjoining bawn on the County Down bank of the Clanrye (Newry) River near Warrenpoint. The surviving rectangular stone keep dates to the 1560s and stands beside a low riverside embankment; the site is a state care historic monument. A later 19th-century mansion nearby is a separate private house and not the medieval tower shown here.
Its prime
1565
Today
Restored
As it stood in 1565
The shape it held in its prime.
A tall, rectangular three-storey tower house of grey local masonry with thick walls and a crenellated parapet; small vertical slit windows and larger rectangular openings puncture the façades. A low stone bawn wall extends along the river edge to enclose a courtyard beside the tower. The keep rises directly from the riverbank/estuary flat, with a simple, unadorned roofline and a compact, blocky silhouette visible against the lough and distant hills.
Its story
The story of Narrow Water Castle.
The site at Narrow Water, on the County Down bank of the Clanrye River, originally held a 13th-century Norman keep associated with Hugh de Lacy. In the 1560s the Magennis family built the surviving tower house and bawn, a typical example of the rectangular, multi-storey towers raised across Ireland at the time, with stairs, closets and latrines set within walls up to 1.5 metres thick.
The castle was damaged during the Irish Rebellion of 1641 and sold to the Hall family in the 1670s. The Halls occupied the tower until they built an Elizabethan-revival mansion — also called Narrow Water Castle — nearby in the early 19th century; that mansion remains their private residence. The 16th-century keep was given into state care in 1956.
Step inside
8 places to explore in 1565.
The record describes 8 distinct spots at Narrow Water Castle — including 3 interiors: mural stair within the wall, first-floor chamber, wall-embedded closets and garderobe. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and walk through every one — more scenes means more photos, more angles and more rooms of the immersive experience.
Create History
Recreate Narrow Water Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1565 — a photoreal walk that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate Castle to Explore →Whose castle
Clans who held Narrow Water Castle.
The families that held Narrow Water Castle for a decade or more across its history — follow a name to its clan.
Magennis
The Magennis family built the tower house and bawn at Narrow Water in the 1560s, replacing the earlier Norman keep.
The Halls bought the castle in the 1670s, occupied the tower until the early 19th century, and still hold the adjacent 19th-century mansion as a private residence.
