page_title: Killeen Castle, Dunsany
section_title: The Cusacks
hierarchical_section_title: Killeen Castle, Dunsany / History / The Cusacks
caption_attribution_description: English: Killeen Castle, County Meath, Ireland showing a view from the North East
context_page_description: Killeen Castle, located in Dunsany, County Meath, Ireland, is the current construction on a site occupied by a castle since around 1180. The current building is a restoration of a largely 19th century structure, burnt out in 1981.
  Killeen was built as one of a pair of castles either side of a major roadway north, the other being the extant Dunsany Castle. Its estate was occupied continuously by the Cusack, and then after a marriage, Plunkett, families, from 1172 to 1951.
context_section_description: The original structure at Killeen Castle is said to have been a Norman fortification, perhaps wooden, built for the de Lacy magnates, and held from 1172 by the Cusack family, beginning with Geoffrey de Cusack.  The stone castle was built by Geoffrey de Cusack around 1181. The date is carved above the doorway. Killeen Castle was the seat of the de Cusacks for over 250 years, from Geoffrey de Cusack (1172) until Lady Joan de Cusack (1441), who with her husband, Sir Christoper Plunkett, "caused the church to be built beside the castle.".
  This Chantry Church is now a national monument 
  An early recorded description of the castle and its interior reads - The date is Aug 1st (the feast of St. Peter's Chains). As we approach the castle we are faced by four tall battlemented towers with five storeys of slit openings linking the curtain walls of the building. The castle is set on a slight mound. We enter by a steep wooden stairway, and find ourselves, having passed through the considerable thickness of the wall from the narrow doorway, into the Great Hall on the first floor. Rushes cover the stone flags, and besides the usual furniture, such as a trestle-table, benches and the straight-backed, carved, oaken armchair of the Lord of the Manor, we note on our left a heavy green and white curtain covering one wall of the Hall. Opposite us with its sloping stone hood is the fireplace with logs burning in the grate. The right hand wall is hung with the Lord's war harness, his morion, hunting trophies and feathered lure used in falconry. It is a costly piece with a perch and gilt borders.
  In such surroundings the de Cusacks, Lords of Killeen, lived, made war, and expanded their fiefdoms for 225 years until the castle passed to the Plunketts through the marriage of Lady Joan de Cusack to Christopher Plunkett of Rathregan in 1399.
caption: Killeen Castle, County Meath
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