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Drumbanagher House

Castles in County ArmaghIrish castle stubsNorthern Ireland building and structure stubsUnited Kingdom castle stubsUse Hiberno-English from November 2020

Drumbanagher House (also known as Drumbanagher Castle and Closes Castle), near Poyntzpass, County Armagh, was a large country house in Northern Ireland designed for Maxwell Close by William Notman, working under William Playfair in 1829, being "one of his grandest country houses." Following occupation by the American and British armies during World War Two, Drumbanagher was demolished by its owner in 1951 due to the expense in up keeping the property; the estate remains in the possession of the Close family. Writing in the Belfast Telegraph in 1962 the then owner said; "No mortal could have afforded to keep the castle going. So I had it demolished. Death duties, upkeep and financial difficulties meant I just had to get rid of it...It was perfectly sound and in good order when it was demolished...Now it looks like a nuclear bomb hit it." Today, all that remains of the house is the "vast arched porte-cochere" (Bence-Jones), which Sir Charles Brett described as "resembling a Roman Arc de Triomphe."

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Drumbanagher House (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors).

Drumbanagher House
Drumbanagher Wall,

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Latitude Longitude
N 54.2667 ° E -6.3833 °
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Drumnamether

Drumbanagher Wall
BT35 6AA
Northern Ireland, United Kingdom
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Murders of Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine

The Tandragee killings took place in the early hours of Saturday 19 February 2000 on an isolated country road outside Tandragee, County Armagh, Northern Ireland. Two young Protestant men, Andrew Robb and David McIlwaine, were beaten and repeatedly stabbed to death in what was part of a Loyalist feud between the Ulster Volunteer Force (UVF) and their rivals, the breakaway Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF). The men were not members of any loyalist paramilitary organisation. It later emerged in court hearings that Robb had made disparaging remarks about the killing of UVF Mid-Ulster Brigade leader Richard Jameson by an LVF gunman the previous month. This had angered the killers, themselves members of the Mid-Ulster UVF, and in retaliation they had lured the two men to the remote lane on the outskirts of town, where they killed and mutilated them. Three men had carried out the double killing: Stephen Leslie Brown (also known as Stephen Leslie Revels), Noel Dillon, and Mark Burcombe. On 3 April 2009, Brown was sentenced to 35 years' imprisonment for each count of murder. Dillon committed suicide in January 2005, and Burcombe, originally charged with the killings, turned 'Queen's evidence' by testifying against Brown and therefore received a reduced sentence. The trial judge, Mr. Justice Gillen, stated that the murders, perpetrated 22 months after the signing of the Good Friday Agreement, were "among the most gruesome of the past 40 years". Both teenagers sustained penetrating, multiple knife wounds inflicted with a butcher's knife which nearly decapitated them. Additionally, Brown stabbed McIlwaine deeply in his left eye. The UVF's Brigade Staff (Belfast leadership) did not sanction the killings.