Qualla: Kilclief Castle https://qualla.com/kilclief-castle en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:16 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_res/siteimages/rsslogo.png Qualla: Kilclief Castle https://qualla.com/kilclief-castle Kilclief Castle: Introduction https://qualla.com/kilclief-castle/ John Sely was the Bishop of Down from 1429 to 1443. In that last year he was ejected from his see and stripped of his offices, not for heresy or financial impropriety or any of the more usual fifteenth-century scandals, but because the woman with whom he was openly cohabiting at his coastal tower house, Lettice Whailey Savage, happened to be married to someone else. The tower house was Kilclief Castle, and it was almost certainly built by Sely himself, between 1412 and 1441, while he was still rising through the church. By the standards of his successors he gave Lecale its earliest piece of late medieval domestic architecture and lost his bishopric for the company he kept there. The tower outlasted his disgrace.

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]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/j/kilclief-castle-wp/gcsj-kilclief-castle-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Kilclief Castle: The Earliest Tower in Lecale https://qualla.com/kilclief-castle/ Kilclief is the oldest tower house in the Lecale peninsula, the long flat block of County Down between Strangford Lough and the Irish Sea where late medieval Anglo-Norman lords concentrated thickly enough to leave more castles per square mile than almost anywhere in Ireland. The ...

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]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/j/kilclief-castle-wp/gcsj-kilclief-castle-the-earliest-tower-in-lecale.mp3 0:06 2 full Kilclief Castle: The Architecture https://qualla.com/kilclief-castle/ The castle is four storeys tall. The ground floor is vaulted in stone, the masons setting their barrel vault on wicker centring in the same fashion as at Jordan's Castle a few miles down the coast, the imprint of the woven willow still visible in the mortar on the underside of th...

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]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/j/kilclief-castle-wp/gcsj-kilclief-castle-the-architecture.mp3 0:06 3 full Kilclief Castle: Sely and Lettice https://qualla.com/kilclief-castle/ The historical record on John Sely is thin enough that what survives is mostly the disgrace. He was Bishop of Down for fourteen years. He built the castle, or had it built, on land that belonged to the see. He lived there openly with Lettice Whailey Savage, a married woman who sh...

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]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/j/kilclief-castle-wp/gcsj-kilclief-castle-sely-and-lettice.mp3 0:06 4 full Kilclief Castle: State Care https://qualla.com/kilclief-castle/ Kilclief Castle is now in state care, managed by the Department for Communities' Historic Environment Division, and guided tours are offered in July and August. The tower stands on the road between Strangford village and Ardglass, two and a half miles south of Strangford, with th...

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]]> Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/s/j/kilclief-castle-wp/gcsj-kilclief-castle-state-care.mp3 0:06 5 full