Brackfield Bawn went up soon after 1611, a square stone enclosure built by Sir Edward Doddington for the Skinners’ Company, one of the London livery companies handed land in the new County Londonderry to settle and defend. Two egg-shaped flanker towers sit at opposite corners – the north-west and south-east – where gun-loops once covered the walls, and along the south side you can still pick out the fireplaces of the house that ran inside it, projecting out beyond the stonework. It stands on a hillslope above the old east–west road to Derry, near the village of Killaloo, a few steps from the Brackfield House hotel.
It’s a modest ruin, not a castle: walls in various states of collapse, heather and bracken between the stones. On its own it’s a ten-minute stop. What makes the detour worth it is the wood next door.
The wood and the poetry trail
A short walk east, Brackfield Wood is the Woodland Trust’s First World War Centenary Wood for Ireland – one of four flagship woods planted across the UK to mark the centenary. Princess Anne planted the last of the oaks here in November 2018. Eight stone sculptures stand along the path, each carved with a verse from Dr Sam Burnside’s collection By Brackfield Bawn, with metal ‘birds in flight’ and a small amphitheatre worked in among them.
The wood is part of the Faughan Valley Woodlands, a scattered run of ancient and newer woods – Oaks, Red Brae, Killaloo, Burntollet – along the river, designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest. About a kilometre of stone and grass paths links them.
A bit of history
The bawn is one of the strong houses the London companies put up across their Ulster estates after 1613, and no two were quite alike. Thomas Raven drew this one for Sir Thomas Phillips’s 1622 survey, so we know roughly how it looked when new. A 1983 excavation confirmed the footprint of the 6-metre house along the south wall but turned up little else. Old records also call the site Crossalt. It’s a scheduled monument – LDY 023:014 – in state care.
Visiting
There’s no car park at the bawn itself, and it sits right on the A6 (Glenshane Road), a fast stretch of road. Park instead at Oaks Wood or Red Brae, both a short walk away, and approach on foot. No toilets on site; the nearest are at Ness Country Park, a short drive north along the valley. The ground around the ruin is uneven, with exposed foundations underfoot, so wear proper shoes, and a few sections are fenced off – stay on the worn paths. Entry is free and the site is unstaffed; come in daylight.
For a fuller day, the River Faughan trail carries on through the valley for walking and angling, and the Ballygroll Prehistoric Landscape a short drive off gathers a cluster of Stone Age monuments that predate the bawn by thousands of years. But the centenary wood and the carved poems are the reason to come – allow an hour for the ruin and the trail together.