Swords Castle

A monastic settlement attributed to St Columba had stood at Swords from the 6th century. In 1181 John Comyn succeeded Laurence O'Toole as Archbishop of Dublin and appears at some point to have chosen Swords as his chief residence, probably because the prebend there was wealthy and much sought after. He held a manor at Swords by 1192, when a patent authorised him to hold an annual week-long fair on St Columba's feast day, 9 June. The castle is generally accepted to have been built around 1200 or a little later as his manorial residence. Comyn kept his own seneschal at Swords, and an ecclesiastical court sat there. In 1216 the manor passed to Henry de Loundres, the second English archbishop, and in 1220 William Galrote was chief constable.

The castle was never strong in the military sense, but it is unusual in that its perimeter wall runs to 305 metres, far larger than normal for an Irish castle. The walls enclose a pentagonal area of nearly 6,000 square metres, with a tower on the north, probably the constable's residence, and an impressive gateway complex on the south. Inside were the archbishop's apartments, apartments for knights and a banqueting hall.

Successive Archbishops of Dublin seem to have occupied the castle for the next hundred years, until Alexander de Bicknor built a new archiepiscopal palace at Tallaght in 1324, by which stage Swords appears to have been abandoned. In 1326 de Bicknor was accused of mishandling the treasury, the profits of his see were seized by the king, and an inquisition sat before the Sheriff of Dublin on 14 March that year. The detailed description of Swords recorded for it makes clear the castle had fallen into disrepair. The adjoining chapel, built in the late 13th century, was probably the archbishop's private oratory; other buildings listed at the inquisition have since vanished, among them the great hall on the east side of the enclosure.

In all likelihood Swords was abandoned because of damage sustained during the Bruce campaign in Ireland of 1317, which devastated the country south from Dundalk to the gates of Dublin. There is no direct evidence that Bruce's forces attacked Swords, which was not fortified well enough to withstand assault; the probability is that the archbishop had removed himself to Tallaght for safety.

It is doubtful all the buildings were ever repaired, though the stepped battlements suggest occupancy in the 15th century, when the castle appears to have been granted to retired archbishops — no documentary evidence shows that any of them lived there. A portion at least seems to have been held by a constable through the 14th, 15th and early 16th centuries. Thomas Fitzsimons of Swords was appointed constable as late as 1547, and the Barnewall family afterwards kept an interest in the constableship and tenancy. By 1583, when it was briefly occupied by Dutch Protestants, it was described as "the quite spoiled old castle". The viceroy, Sir Henry Sydney, had part of the building repaired for the colony of Dutch weavers, who he hoped might "show some example of industry to the lazy natives".

During the 1641 Rebellion the castle was chosen as the rendezvous for the Anglo-Irish Catholic families of the Pale. On 9 December that year they assembled under arms at Swords to join the rebellion, and were attacked by Sir Charles Coote on the orders of the Lords Justices. Coote put them to flight, chased them out of their fortifications and killed two hundred of them. Some burials found in modern excavations may relate to that day.

An Ordnance Survey map of 1837 shows the bawn of the castle converted into a garden. After the disestablishment of the Church of Ireland in 1870 the castle was sold to the Cobbe family, who leased it to a local shopkeeper, Robert Savage; he turned the grounds into an orchard and sold the produce in his shop. In the 1930s the site was placed under the guardianship of the Office of Public Works, and in 1985 Dublin County Council bought the castle with a view to restoring it.

Fingal County Council's parks department carried out a conservation study and in 1995 agreed a plan for the long-term phased restoration of the castle. Work on the Constable's Tower began in 1996 and finished in 1998; restoration of the rest continues. Swords Castle is a national monument of Ireland, listed on Fingal County Council's Record of Protected Structures. The chapel opened for weddings in 2019, and the castle and courtyard are open to the public from Tuesday to Sunday.