Strangford Castle

Strangford Castle is a small tower house on a height above the harbour in the village of Strangford, County Down, Northern Ireland, looking across the Narrows to Portaferry Castle. In its present form it is late 16th century; a blocked first-floor doorway of 15th-century type shows that an earlier tower was remodelled. A report of 1540 already called a castle at Strangford ruinous.

The building is a simple rectangular three-storey tower without a stone vault or stone stair. Floors were always timber; the present ones are modern. The reconstructed entrance in the north-east wall sits under a surviving corbelled machicolation and a draw-bar socket. The ground floor is lit only by gun-loops. The first-floor fireplace has an oven and a dry keeping-place; there are window-seats on the first and second floors. The parapet has well-cut crenellations with pistol-loops.