Castlebellingham

History

Evidence of ancient settlement in the area include fulacht fiadh, fosse (ring ditch) and a motte and bailey site in the surrounding townlands of Castlebellingham, Greenmount and Kilsaran. A religious house in Kilsaran townland, of which no trace is visible and which had a reputed association with the Knights Templar, is recorded in some texts. From at least 1301, the area was known as Gernonstown (also spelled Gernoun or Garland), a reference to the prominent Anglo-Norman family which had significant lands in County Louth. It is believed the name originated from Montfiquet in Normandy. The surname is derived from the old French word gernon, meaning "moustache", likely a nickname for an ancestor. The castle of Castlebellingham served as one of the ancestral homes of members of the eponymous Bellingham family from the 17th century to the mid-20th century. The family originated in the small town of Kendal, Westmorland in England. The original ancestor of the Irish Bellinghams, Alan Bellingham, hailed from here. Henry Bellingham (d.1676), a descendant of Alan was a cavalry officer who first came to Ireland during the English Civil War. The lands of Gernonstown were granted to Henry during the Cromwellian Settlement, in which a large amount of native Irish lands were given to Englishmen in reward for their service. Henry is named in the list of grantees under the Acts of Settlement and Explanation of Charles II s. In 1666, Charles II formally granted the lands to him for his ‘faithful service as a good soldier in the late wars’. The castle was rebuilt by Thomas Bellingham in the 1690s following the first castle's destruction by Jacobites during the Williamite War in Ireland. The calvary near the castle was built by Sir Alan Henry Bellingham (1846–1921) in memory of his…