The story of Mountjoy Castle
Mountjoy Castle was raised at the end of the Nine Years War, the long Elizabethan campaign against Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. An earlier fort was thrown up on the site by Francis Roe in 1602 during the fighting, and the surviving brick-and-stone castle was built between roughly 1602 and 1605 on the orders of Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy, the Lord Deputy of Ireland who gave the place its name. Sitting deep in O'Neill's own territory, it was a statement of English control on the shore of Lough Neagh.
The design reflects its moment. This was a campaign fort meant to hold ground and command the lough, not a comfortable residence. The central block carried four spear-shaped angle towers studded with gun-loops, and the red bricks were produced locally at Coalisland. Between the castle and the water lay a much larger earthwork known as Mountjoy Fort, recorded in a contemporary map drawn by the mapmaker Richard Bartlett.
Its strategic value made it a prize fought over for decades. During the Irish Rebellion of 1641 it was captured by forces under Sir Phelim O'Neill, with Turlough Gruama O'Quinn leading the operation, and it changed hands repeatedly through the 1640s. It remained a working military post into the late 17th century, with the area's forts still in use around the time of the Williamite war of 1689 to 1691.
Today Mountjoy Castle is a ruin in state care, protected as a State Care Historic Monument. The rectangular core and three of its four towers still stand, with dressed quoins, gun-loops and the draw-bar hole at the south-east entrance among the details that survive, weathered but legible, above the quiet lakeside.