‘Dundrum Castle is usually supposed to have been erected for the Knights Templar by the renowned Sir John de Courcey, and that powerful body possessed it till the abolition of the order in the year 1313. It was afterwards granted to the Prior of Down, who held it, with a small manor adjoining, till the final suppression of religious orders; and the reversion of this house and manor, with the yearly rent of 6l. 13s. 6d. reserved out of it, was granted to Gerald, Earl of Kildare.’
From the Dublin Penny Journal, No.36, Vol.1, March 2 1833.

‘This Castle was granted to the family of Magennis; on their forfeiture, it became the property of the Earl of Ardglass, and afterwards was in the possession of the Lord Viscount Blundell; the ruins are of an irregular multangular ſorm, with a fine round tower, which is about thirty-five feet diameter in the inside.”  Thus far Mr. Archdall. In addition to which, Harris says, “When the Castle was in repair it often proved a good guard to the pass, and as often an offensive neighbour to the English planted in Lecale, according to the hands that possessed it. Anno 1517, the Earl of Kildare, then Lord Deputy, marched into Lecale, and took it by storm; it being garriſoned at that time by the Irish, who had driven out the English ſome time before. It was again possessed and repaired by the Magennises, and re-taken by the Lord Deputy Gray, with seven castles more in Lecale, anno 1538. lt afterwards got into the hands of Phelim McEver Magennis, who was obliged to yield it to the Lord Mountjoy on the 16th of June in the year 1601, It met with another fate during the progress of the war of 1641, when it was demolished by the order of Cromwell, though then garrisoned by Protestants, and has ever since been suffered to run entirely to ruin.’
From The Antiquities of Ireland, Vol.1 by Francis Grose (1791)

‘The old Castle of Dundrum, boldly and picturesquely seated on a high rock covered with verdure, commanded in the ages of warfare the entrance to the harbour — if to the inner Bay, or rather the estuary of the Blackstaff Water, the appellation may be applied. This was considered one of the finest castles erected by the first Anglo-Norman adventurers; and its ivy-mantled ruins contribute materially to the strikingly romantic features of the landscape. These ruins consist of a great circular keep or tower, with detached fragments of towers, and ruins of other outworks, and a barbican. At a little distance southward of the castle are the mouldering remains of a large mansion, partly a fortalice and partly a dwelling-house of the sort in use in the sixteenth century. From these ruins we command a wider sweep of the magnificent scenery described at Newcastle.’
From A Picturesque Handbook to Carlingford Bay by Robert Greer (1846)

The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by