The shell of Summerhill, County Mayo, a house that retained its roof within living memory. Summerhill is believed to have been built in the 1770s for the Palmer family its five-bay façade centred on a pedimented breakfront with first-floor Venetian window. The site on raised ground was chosen to provide a view down towards the Palmerstown river beside which stand the ruins of the Dominican Rathfran Friary. Today the two complexes rival each other in decay.
One of the groundfloor windows in a building known as the Mint in Carlingford, County Louth. A three-storey tower house dating from the 15th/16th centuries, the property is believed to have derived its name from a charter granted to the town in 1467 to mint its own coinage. The house may have been used for this purpose, or may simply stand on what was the site of a mint. It was perhaps built as a defensive residence for a local family, although the absence of chimneypieces argue against this proposal. In any case, what now distinguishes the Mint are its limestone ogee windows, five on two floors, which beneath substantial hoods feature a variety of carved figures including a horse and a man, as well as abstract interlace decoration which indicates a revival of interest in more ancient Celtic art.
What remains of Ferns Castle, County Wexford. It is believed to have been constructed in the mid-1220s by William Marshal, second Earl of Pembroke. The family is said to have suffered from a curse placed on it by Ailbe Ua Maíl Mhuaidh, Bishop of Ferns after the first Earl of Pembroke had seized some of his property. The bishop declared that the male line of the Marshals should die out, as indeed it did as all five sons of the first earl failed to leave behind an heir. The fate of Ferns Castle was not much better: during the Confederate Wars, it was blown up in 1641 by Sir Charles Coote (future Earl of Mountrath) to prevent the building falling into his opponents’ hands. Only one of the original four corner towers survives and large sections of the walls are entirely lost, but enough survives to give an idea of how it must have looked.
On a site high above a bend in the river Boyne stand the remains of Ardmulchan church, County Meath. Dedicated to the Virgin Mary, a church was originally established here in the 12th century by the de Lacy family who also constructed fortifications in the vicinity. Little remains other than the square bell tower which may be 13th/14th century and small portions of the slightly later nave and chancel. As so often in Ireland, the graveyard remained in active use long after the church.
In the seventh century an Irish monk called Muirchú moccu Machtheni composed his Life of St Patrick from which derives much of our knowledge about the latter. Muirchú’s work was very much a hagiography and ought not necessarily be taken as historically accurate. For example, he tells a story of Patrick coming to the Hill of Slane in County Meath and lighting a Paschal fire there in the year 433. This act was in defiance of orders issued by the High King Laoire who forbade any other fires being lit while that on the Hill of Tara (some ten miles from Slane) burned to mark the pagan Spring festival of Beltaine. According to Muirchú King Laoire, although angry, was sufficiently impressed by Patrick’s bold non-compliance that he allowed him to continue proselytizing. The same source also proposes that one of the king’s druids called Erc was even more affected by what had occurred and converted to Christianity, after which he was made Bishop of Slane by Patrick. Later moving to Kerry, Erc is said to have been the teacher of St Brendan, the sixth century ‘Voyager.’
Although a religious house was established on the Hill of Slane, the present remains date from a later foundation created for the Franciscan order by the Flemings, a prominent Norman family, members of which were Barons Slane from 1370 until the death of the last of the direct line some four centuries later. Like many others, the Flemings remained loyal to the Roman Catholic faith and suffered the consequences: Christopher, twenty-second Lord Slane was attainted in 1691 owing to his support of James II and subsequently moved to mainland Europe. He was eventually reconciled to the British government and in 1713 Queen Anne created him first Viscount Longford, but since no letters patent were issued before her death a year later the title had no validity (in any case, he in turn died without male heirs in 1726). Meanwhile the Franciscans saw their friary closed in the 16th century but then temporarily restored to them by the Flemings. Members of the Capuchin order also took up residence here at one stage but the site seems to have been abandoned for good in 1723, after which it fell into ruin.
What can be seen today on the Hill of Slane is primarily a rebuilding of the friary undertaken for the Franciscans in 1512 by Christopher Fleming, fourteenth Lord Slane. It is divided into two sections: the church and the college. The former is surrounded by a walled graveyard and its most striking feature is the tower at the west end of the building. This rises some sixty-two feet and incorporates a fine 15th century Gothic window above the doorcase. Relatively little remains of the main body of the church. The adjacent college buildings were intended to house four priests, four lay brothers and four choristers, with three ranges grouped around a central courtyard and the fourth side to the west closed by a curtain wall. A spiral staircase in one corner provides access to the upper levels, the views from which explain why this location was always likely to be of significance; from here it is possible to scan the surrounding countryside for several miles to south and east. Nearby are the remains of a motte and bailey believed to have been constructed by the Flemings before they moved their residence to a lower site which is the present Slane Castle.
In 1809 in an effort to put a stop to marine-based smuggling the British government – then at war with Napoleonic France – established a body called the Preventive Water Guard (otherwise known as the Preventive Boat Service). Operating across these islands, the Waterguard was the sea-based arm of revenue enforcement, its members based in Watch Houses around the coast of Britain and Ireland, with boat crews patrolling the waters at night. While they were primarily concerned with bringing smuggling to an end, they also gave assistance to shipwrecks and indeed kept an eye out for foreign vessels entering national waters. In 1821 a committee of enquiry proposed responsibility for the Preventative Water Guard be transferred from HM Treasury to the Board of Customs. Until then, the Board of Customs and the Board of Excise each had their own long-established preventative forces: shore-based Riding Officers for the former and sea-going Revenue Cruisers for the latter. The committee recommended these services be consolidated and so in January 1822 they were placed under the authority of the Board of Customs and renamed the Coast Guard.
The Coast Guard established in 1822 duly inherited existing shore stations and watch houses from the two earlier bodies (as well as a number of coastal vessels) and these provided bases for its operations, with additional properties being constructed as deemed necessary. The first Coast Guard instructions were published in 1829: while still primarily occupied with the prevention of smuggling they also stipulated that when a wreck took place the Coast Guard was responsible for taking all possible action to save lives, taking charge of the vessel and protecting property. By the 1850s, coastal smuggling was no longer so serious a matter and so responsibility for the Coast Guard was transferred from the Board of Customs to the Admiralty. Over the following decades the service began to operate more like a supplementary naval service, although it still was responsible for carrying out rescues and protection of property in the event of a shipwreck.
The Coast Guard service was based in stations right around the island, with fifteen of these in County Kerry. The stations were usually built to a standard design. Typically they comprised a terrace of five or six houses set back from the shore but within easy reach of it. There would also be a watch tower and, by the sea, a boat house and slipway. Each terrace included residences for the chief boatman, his men and their families. Inside would be a sitting room and kitchen (plus scullery) on the ground floor, and bedrooms upstairs. As a rule the entrance to each house was to the rear (away from coastal winds) with just windows on the front looking out to sea. These stations survived until the early 1920s when, like other centres such as army and Royal Irish Constabulary barracks, they were attacked and burnt during the War of Independence and ensuing Civil War to ensure they could not be used by the enemy. Many of them, like this example in Ballinskelligs, County Kerry, now stand empty and ruinous, a largely forgotten aspect of the country’s maritime history.
‘Some sixteen miles from Limerick, in the direction of Cork, the Irish Balbec claims the attention of the passer by. It is a place to arouse sympathies with departed greatness; to remind the sojourner that earthly fabrics bow to Time. Here is a combination of ancient glory and present debasement – faded grandeur and upstart pretension, not to be rivalled, perhaps, in any other land…
The place was anciently called Killochia, Kilmocheallog, and Kilmaloge, whence Kilmallock, or the church of Moloch, from an abbey for Canons Regular, founded here by St Mocheallog, or Moloch, at the beginning of the seventh century. The absence of early records in this country prevents our tracing its history for several centuries; but the magnificence of the ruins, which obtained for it the proud, but mournful, appellation of the Balbec of Ireland, evince its progress to distinction. Who were the great men that directed its measures – who presided over its religious houses, taught in its schools, or governed its forces, we know not; all its earlier history is lost in the obscurity of its remote origin, and the interest given to every spot trodden by the good or the brave, of days when the land was the Land of Saints, is unfelt.’
James FitzGerald ‘was created Earl of Desmond by patent A.D.1600 and took up his residence at Kilmallock under the protection of the Lord President of Munster [George Carew]. The joy of the followers of the race of Fitz-Gerald knew no bounds, at the prospect of again beholding one of the hereditary chieftains, under whom they and their fathers so long lived. Crowds thronged all the streets, doors and windows, “yea, the very gutters and tops of the houses were filled, as if they came to see him whom God had sent to be the comfort and delight their soules and heartes most desired; and they welcomed him with all the expressions and signs of joy; every one throwing upon him wheat and salt, as a prediction of future peace and plenty.”…
Yet this was to be all shortly changed. The next day was Sunday, and the Earl attended service in the parish church. When the followers of Desmond learned that their lord had forsaken the faith of his fathers, their hearts were utterly alienated from him. At first they tried expostulation, imploring him, on their knees, to return to the ancient creed; he refused to abandon the religion he was reared in [the Anglican church] and urged the spirit of toleration to be inculcated by the gospel. This by no means satisfied their views; they reviled him as an apostate, looking on him as a spy from England – an instrument employed to sap the foundations of their Church; and the voices which the day before uttered blessings, now inverted their prayers, and heaped curses on his head. They denied his right to the title of Desmond; every ignominy was cast on him as he passed through Kilmallock; and not being able to stir without insult and reproach, he left the town and returned to England. His death seems to have made little sensation, as the following account of it in the Pacata Hibernia shows. “The 11th (January 1601), the Lord President had intelligence from England, that James (the late restored Earl of Desmond) was dead, and that eighteen hundred quarters of oates were sent into Munster for the reliefe of oure horses”.
‘An abbey near the town is partly in ruins and partly preserved – the latter portion [where the Earl of Desmond attempted to worship in 1600] used as the parish church. It was dedicated to St Peter and St Paul, and was used in the days of monastic institution as a collegiate church, consisting of nave, aisles and transepts, and beautiful and noble it must have been in its former splendour, and still with its lines of pillars, massy and grey – lofty pointed arches springing from the square shafts – the lancet-shaped windows of five lights yet preserved, and the sculptured memorials of the Knights and their dames, who when living frequented it, all to pray for victory, or to pray for the repose of those who had fallen in the fight, preserves many a point of picturesque beauty.’
Extracts from Kilmallock – The Balbec of Ireland, in The Irish National Magazine, And Weekly Journal of Literature, Science and Art, Saturday, July 11, 1846.
The remains of St Patrick’s, Killowen located on the outskirts of Kenmare, County Kerry. The church was reported in good repair in 1806 and enlarged six years later but replaced in 1856 by another building closer to the town centre, it being declared at the time ‘the old church was so small the increasing number of Protestants could not be accommodated.’ Since then it has fallen into ruin but the graveyard is notable for being the burial site of English-born composer Ernest J Moeran who from 1930 onwards spent the greater part of his time living in this part of the country (both his father and grandfather had been an Irish Anglican clergymen). Moeran died after falling into the river Kenmare in December 1950.
In Ireland today the name John B Keane is usually associated with a Kerry author of popular stage dramas. In the 19th century however, it would be more likely taken to refer to a successful architect. The date of John Benjamin Keane’s birth is unknown but by 1819-20 he was working as an assistant to Richard Morrison. In 1823 he was listed in Wilson’s Dublin Directory as practising under his own name and for the next two decades enjoyed a busy career. Among his most notable commissions was the design of St Mel’s Cathedral, Longford, recently restored after a disastrous fire in 2009, and Queen’s College in Galway (now NUI Galway) in 1845. Keane’s winning design for the latter was described at the time as being ‘ a magnificent edifice in the style of Henry the Eight’s time.’ In addition to such public properties, he also designed a number of private residences, including Magheramenagh Castle, County Fermanagh.
Magheramenagh belonged to a branch of the Johnston family, large numbers of whom had moved from Scotland to this part of the country in the early 17th century. Successive generations lived in the same area of Fermanagh, the estate being inherited in 1833 by James Johnston who five years later married Cecilia, daughter of Thomas Newcomen Edgeworth of County Longford. It would appear that around this time he commissioned from Keane the design of a home for his new bride. The building was much in the style then fashionable, a loose interpretation of Tudor Gothic indicated by the presence of blind gables, polygonal turrets, castellations and finials. Of two storeys other (than a three-floor square tower in the north-east corner) and all faced in crisp limestone, the main entrance was to the north, the southern front looking down on the river Erne. A large conservatory occupied much of the eastern end of the building while the service wing stood to the west, an enfilade of four reception rooms occupying the space between.
Ultimately neither Magheramenagh nor its architect had a happy ending. Keane’s career was wrecked by alcoholism, he fell into debt and was imprisoned in the Marshalsea Gaol (a debtor’s prison off Dublin’s south quays: it was demolished in 1975) before dying in 1859. Meanwhile James Johnston had died in 1873 and Magheramenagh passed to his son Robert. He in turn died just nine years later, leaving the estate to his son James Cecil Johnston, then aged less than two. James Cecil would be killed at Gallipoli in August 1915, Magheramenagh then occupied by his widow and two young daughters. Unable to manage, they left the property in 1921 and it was bought as a residence for the local Roman Catholic priest: the following May the house was briefly taken over by the members of the British armed forces. Reverting back to the parish, thereafter it remained in use as a presbytery until the 1950s when abandoned and unroofed. Afterwards a large part of the house was demolished: it can be seen what now remains on the site.
Dusk at Dunbrody Abbey, County Wexford. This Cistercian monastery was founded in 1182 by Hervé de Montmorency, uncle of Richard de Clare, otherwise known as Strongbow. The site was initially offered to the monks of Buldwas, Shropshire but after they declined it came under the care of St Mary’s Abbey in Dublin. Most of the extant buildings, including the substantial church, date from the first half of the 13th century. Dunbrody was officially dissolved in 1536 and nine years later the buildings and surrounding land were acquired by Sir Osborne Etchingham.
