placenamesMountjoy
Muinseo
Two distinct fortifications beside Lough Neagh connect the Mountjoy locality with the Nine Years’ War and the military landscape that followed.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Muinseo · Irish · main form · validated name
- Mountjoy · English · main form
Place & story
The surviving castle
Mountjoy Castle stands on a low rise overlooking Lough Neagh. Its rectangular central block has four projecting corner towers, pierced by openings through which defenders could fire along the walls. Stone forms the lower part of the building, with brick above. A hole for a drawbar survives at the former entrance in the south-east wall, another detail of its defensive arrangement. [2]
Two fortifications
The surviving building should be distinguished from the larger campaign fort erected in 1602 during Mountjoy's advance against Hugh O'Neill. The Department for Communities identifies the castle as probably the later fortification described by Sir George Carew in 1611, completed after 1605 beside the older fort. Richard Bartlett's 1602 pictorial map records that earlier earthwork nearer the lough shore. [2]
Excavating the earlier fort
In June 2018, Queen's University Belfast investigated the campaign fort at Brocagh in Magheralamfield townland. Geophysical survey and Bartlett's map guided the excavation, because no remains were visible above ground. Archaeologists exposed an internal defensive ditch, up to six metres wide and 1.5 metres deep, with its accompanying bank. They also uncovered part of a truncated red-brick building within the fort. [3]
Objects from the military site
Finds included pottery, clay-pipe stems, animal bone, glass and lead shot for pistols and calivers. A decorated wine-glass stem suggested an object of greater value than ordinary soldiers could readily afford. The excavation also produced prehistoric flint tools and medieval pottery, evidence of activity in the landscape before the fort. Those earlier objects do not, by themselves, date the military earthworks. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Tyrone
- Barony
- Dungannon Middle
- Civil parish
- Clonoe
- Within
- Magheralamfield
- Coordinates
- 54.55224, -6.60889 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 135098 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Mountjoy. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Mountjoy Castle, TYR047:002 · Department for Communities, Historic Environment Division
- Brocagh,2018community excavation · Queen’s University Belfast, Centre for Archaeological Fieldwork
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2019-01-22. How this page was prepared.