audley s castle

Audley's Castle is a 15th century tower-house which retains the name of a 16th century owner, John Audley. It is a three-storey tower with the south-east doorway on the ground floor protected by two flanking towers, and with a stone vault - with marks of its original wicker centring - roofing the first floor rather than the ground floor, which would be more usual. The tower stood in the northern corner of a bawn, now reduced to its foundations, but whose walls would have originally protected a number of small domestic buildings. The tower stands on an eminent hillock with a steep drop to the lough below. Even in the 18th century, it looked a sufficiently romantic ruin with its sylvan background beside Strangford Lough for the owners of Castle Ward nearby to use it to close the vista they had created from the Temple in the estate.