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Archdale of Castle Archdale and Riversdale
"The Archdale family came originally from Staffordshire, but Martin Archdale (d. 1597) went to London and made enough money as a merchant there to buy an estate in Suffolk a few years before his early death. His son, John Archdale (1578-1621), who inherited as a minor, sold the Suffolk estate in order to became an 'undertaker' in the plantation of Ulster in 1612. He received grants of land in Fermanagh and Tyrone and built Castle Archdale near the shores of Lough Erne in 1615.
John's descendants remained large landowners in Fermanagh until the 20th century, but their tenure of the estates was anything but smooth. John's son, Edward Archdale (1604-41) was killed in the Irish rebellion of 1641, probably when the rebels took Castle Archdale and slaughtered his wife and family. Only his youngest son, William Archdale (c.1640-1722), survived, reputedly protected by his Catholic nurse from the fury of the attackers. After the Civil War he rebuilt Castle Archdale on a rather smaller scale, only for this house in turn to be sacked and burned in the troubles of 1689-90. The ruins of the old castle were abandoned after 1690 and remain today as a reminder of the violence of 17th century Ireland. William had married the eldest daughter of William Mervyn of Omagh and Trillick (Tyrone), from whose family his grandson eventually inherited the Trillick estate. When he died in 1722 he was succeeded by his three children in turn. The elder son, Mervyn Archdale (1685-1726), who was a Colonel in the Army, died suddenly in Dublin in 1726, and his younger brother, Edward Archdale (1694-1728) also died young. Neither had any children, so the Castle Archdale estate passed to their sister Angel (c.1688-1745), the wife of Nicholas Montgomery (d. 1763) of Derrygonnelly (Fermanagh), who took the name Archdall on their receiving the inheritance. The original spelling of the family name was fairly consistently Archdale; Nicholas and his successors used the form Archdall until the mid 19th century, when most but not all of his descendants reverted to Archdale."