Category Archives: Irish Castle

The Real Thing


After last Monday’s discussion of the incomplete fantasy that is Brittas Castle, here are some remains of the real thing. Moylough Castle in County Galway dates from the first half of the 13th century and is associated with the Norman de Cotterell and de Cogeshale families who would have arrived in this part of the country around that time. Three sides of the building survive, of three storeys and constructed of local limestone rubble, almost 40 feet long and 21 feet wide, rising to 46 feet with walls over six feet thick. It is thought that the Normans occupied the site until the late 13th or early 14th centuries, after which it passed into the possession of the dominant O’Kelly family. However, like many such properties, it was probably abandoned in the 17th century and left to fall into its present ruinous state, today beloved only by the cattle sharing the same site. 


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An Unfortunate Accident

In January 1835, The Gentleman’s Magazine reported that Major Henry Langley of Brittas Castle, County Tipperary, ‘late Captain in the 2nd Life Guards’ had died the previous year on October 12th at the age of 48. The cause of death was not given, although, as will be explained, this was somewhat unusual. Major Langley was the descendant of Lieutenant Henry Langley, a Lancashire-born soldier who came to Ireland with the English Commonwealth army in 1649, and became a member of Colonel Hierom Sankey’s regiment of horse. According to the County Tipperary historian James White, writing at the start of the last century, while participating in the Siege of Clonmel in April 1650, ‘Captain Langley, who was one of the first to volunteer for service with the storming party, had his left hand cut off by a blow of a scythe as he was attempting to mount the breach.’ Nothing daunted, the injured man had his severed stump fitted with an iron hook and was thereafter known as ‘Langley of the Iron Hand.’ Five years later, he was rewarded for his services with grants of land in Counties Waterford and Tipperary, and these would remain in his family for several generations, with additions made through advantageous marriages. One of these was the union in 1754 of a later Henry Langley and Margaret Grace, heiress to the Brittas Castle estate, which had passed from the Butlers to her forebears in the  1660s. This was the property which Major Langley had inherited after his uncle Henry Grace Langley had died in 1821 without any surviving children of his own. 






An undated engraving, produced during the lifetime of Henry Grace Langley, shows the original Brittas Castle to have incorporated two squat square battlemented towers and one round tower connected by two-storey buildings, the whole fronted by a gable-ended, five-bay, three-storey house. Seemingly, this was badly damaged by a fire in 1820, after which the whole site was cleared and, following Major Langley inheriting the estate, ambitious plans drawn up for an entirely new castle to be built on the site. The architect chosen for this job was William Vitruvius Morrison and, according to his brother John, writing six years after William Vitruvius’s death in 1838, ‘The design of this edifice was by the desire of the proprietor, both in form and proportions, that of the ancient English baronial castle of the earlier period.’  The Norman Warwick Castle is often cited as a formative influence on the proposed building, where work initially progressed well but then came to a halt in October 1834 when Major Langley, who was inspecting progress, was struck by falling masonry and killed. After this disaster, the family appears to have gone into rapid decline because by October 1851 Brittas was in the hands of the Court of Chancery and two years later it was offered for sale in the Encumbered Estates Court. The purchaser, who paid £13,000 for the entire estate in December 1853, was Colonel William Knox, member of a Mayo family. His descendants lived there until the second half of the last century, after which it passed into the care of the present owner’s family. 





Material assembled in the 1830s for the never-completed Ordnance Survey Name Books observed that Brittas Castle was ‘a modern unfurnished building on a most magnificent scale but in all probability it will never be finished.’ Such indeed proved to be the case, with a long, single-storey dwelling instead being constructed to the rear of what had been done on the site. What stands – which was only intended to be the gatehouse to the main castle behind – is unlike anything else seen in this country, a towering structure comprising two octagonal battlemented towers some 60 feet high which flank an entrance which, if finished, would have been reached across a drawbridge, since a substantial moat was dug around the whole plot. As has been noted in the Irish Architectural Archive’s compendium of the Morrisons’ oeuvre (published 1989), no other castle by this architect ‘is, even in part, so austerely antiquarian.’ Although incomplete, what can be seen today displays extremely high standards of workmanship and finish. Behind the gateway are the remains of what would have been an enclosed courtyard, in turn leading to the main building, its walls left as a series of giant steps. The two towers at the front, with walls eight feet thick, climb three storeys, on each of which narrow passageways, lit by arrow slit openings, give way to a series of lofty, stone vaulted chambers. One can only speculate what the rest of the building would have looked like, had Major Langley not been struck by that piece of falling masonry. That unfortunate accident left his ambitious plans unrealised, but at least what survives is being well managed and allows us to imagine what, under other circumstances, might have stood here, a castle like no other in Ireland. 


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Of More than Ordinary Interest


‘Clonmines: Ths group of ruins is of more than ordinary interest, as it contains a church which was described by the late G. V. Du Noyer as, in his opinion, quite unique in Ireland, if not in Britain the fortified or Castle Church of Clonmines [see last section of text below]. This singular building stands on a rise of ground adjoining the monastery but detached from it, and when viewed from the westward quite resembles a square castle, the north-east and south-west angles of which are prolonged into small but lofty crenellated turrets. Du Noyer thinks that it is exceedingly probable that this building was erected by Nicholas the clerk at the close of the fourteenth century…’





‘…Clonmines was a parliamentary borough, and elected members of Parliament until the Union. A castle was built here by one of the family of Roger de Sutton, who accompanied Fitz Stephen to Ireland. This castle was in modern times converted into a dwelling-house. Archdall, in his “Mon. Hib.,” states that “Clonmines is a borough town, in the barony of Shelburne, six miles south-east of Dunbrody. The family of Cavanagh founded a monastery here for Eremites following the rule of St. Augustine. In A.D. 1385 it was enlarged and beautified by Nicholas the clerk, son of Nicholas; and the friars of the order of St. Dominick afterwards obtained possession of it. Nicholas Woding was the last prior…’





‘…Fraser, in his Survey (Robert Fraser, Statistical Survey of the County of Wexford, 1807), tells us that the Danes had a mint at Clonmines, and we learn from the State Papers that Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Queens Mary and Elizabeth, all worked the silver and lead mines here. On the 12th of January, 1552, Joachim Gunderfilgen explains to the Privy Council that he is building a workshop at Ross, and was unable to send particulars about the mines. Later on Mr. Robert, Record Surveyor of Mines for the Privy Council of England, sends an account of the silver and lead got at Clonmines and molten at Ross. In the time of Queen Elizabeth, Walter Pepparde had charge of these mines for the Queen; his son Anthony seems to have been the founder of Peppard’s Castle, Co. Wexford.’
Extracts from Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Volume VI, Fifth Series, 1896.





‘I allude to a fortified church, or rather castle-church, forming one of the groups of ecclesiastical ruins at Clonmines on the shore of Bannow Bay, in the county of Wexford. This singular building stands on a rise of ground adjoining the monastery, but detached from it, and when viewed from the westward quite resembles a square castle, the north-east and south-west angles of which are prolonged into small but lofty crenellated turrets…The doorway nearly facing the spectator conducts to the church, and the arched recess adjoining it may have been intended for a tomb or seat, and probably the former. Externally this church measures thirty-seven feet by twenty-six feet, the walls being five feet thick, thus imparting to it an unusual degree of strength and solidity; the parapet walls are about two feet eight thick , and are all embattled.
The east wall is pierced, at the height of about seven feet from the ground, by a small window of two pointed lights. It is not till we enter this building that its true character and object become apparent, and we at once perceive that we are in a lofty arched room, half church and half residence. The eastern end of this room forms a square of sixteen feet six inches, and is groined with massive chamfered ribs, springing from each corner, and crossed by others, springing from the sides. This groining defines the limits of the church; the remaining western portion being simply arched, and is somewhat lower than the eastern, thus forming a flat typanum overhead, against which was laid the wooden partition which screened off the living room. In the sill of the window on the south side, is a small piscina; and in the north and south walls, at their junction with the east wall, there are small square unornamented aumbries; to the right of the door in the west wall there is a small stoop.’ 
Extracts from ‘Notes on some Peculiarities in Ancient and Mediaeval Ecclesiastical Architecture’, by George Victor Du Noyer, Esq in Journal of the Kilkenny and South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society, Volume V, New Series, 1864-66


Please note: The remains at Clonmines, County Wexford stand on private land and are not open to the public.
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An Antiquarian’s Delight


The O’Dwyer family claimed descent from Milesius of Spain who, according to legend, conquered Ireland for the Gaels (hence the term ‘Milesians’ to describe the Irish race). By the late Middle Ages, the O’Dwyers had settled in the Barony of Kilnamanagh, Co. Tipperary, where their primary base was Dundrum, some eight miles to the west of Cashel. In this area, they constructed a number of castles, not least one at Dundrum, later replaced by a house constructed in the 18th century for the Maude family. Not far away, in the 16th century the O’Dwyers built another large castle at Killenure, which remained an important base for them until the Confederate Wars and their aftermath. According to the Civil Survey of 1654, the site had until then been occupied by ‘Charles O’Dwyer of Cullynuer Irish Papist.’ As for the property, it was described as ‘one demolished castle irreparable and one thatched house.’ Like many other such families, in the course of the Cromwellian settlement, the O’Dwyers were dispossessed of their lands, which in this case subsequently passed into the ownership of a branch of the Coppingers, who have featured here before (see Holding Court « The Irish Aesthete). They must have been responsible for adding a small residence to the east of the castle, using this as a shooting lodge. However, in 1746, the Coppingers sold Killenure to William George Cooper. 






The first of Killenure’s new owners to arrive in Ireland was Austin Cooper, originally from Surrey where he inherited property, but having sold it for some £1.500 around 1661, he moved to this country and settled in County Wicklow where he became responsible for the gardens around the house at Blessington built by Michael Boyle, future Archbishop of Armagh. There Cooper was responsible for creating one of the finest baroque gardens in Ireland, its greenhouse was one of the first places in the country where fruit was grown out of season. He became renowned for his feats of strength, such as taking two men, one in each hand, slapping them together and throwing them on a dunghill. Seemingly, if he held onto a cart, the horse pulling it could not move. It was his great-grandson, William, who moved to Killenure, having been appointed Diocesan Registrar of Cashel by Archbishop Arthur Price. Cooper and his wife Jane Wayland would have 14 children, their eldest son Samuel acting as land agent for his neighbours, the Maudes of Dundrum, whose estate management was much admired by Arthur Young when he visited in 1776. One of Samuel Cooper’s younger brothers was Austin Cooper who despite a life working in the Irish Treasury Office in Dublin is today remembered as an ardent antiquarian who measured, described and drew historic monuments, predominantly castles and churches, throughout the country. All this material was donated by the family to the National Library of Ireland in 1993: one of his pictures shows Killenure Castle, as it then looked. 






As can be seen here, Killenure Castle is very much a building in two parts, with a large house built to one side of the old O’Dwyer property. As it exists now, the two-storey house is L-shaped, and dates from two periods, the original five-bay pedimented block c.1770 and what is now the entrance front of four bays added c.1800. Adjoining this to the west stand the substantial remains of the original building, which is a curious blend of an old-fashioned defensive castle and an Elizabethan manor house, with a gable-fronted facade, mullioned windows and tall chimney stacks. Another distinctive feature is that it has a circular defensive tower at each of the four corners. One of these towers has later, larger window openings with brick surrounds, indicating this section was in use relatively recently but otherwise the castle seems little altered since first constructed, although nothing of substance remains inside. The Coopers remained at Killenure until 1963 when the estate was sold and the family moved to England. Happily,after a period when it appears the future of the property was in doubt, almost 20 years ago, it was bought by a family and has remained well cared for ever since.


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Three Quarters Left



After last Monday’s concern over the fate of Ballyteige Castle, County Wexford, here is an example of what can happen to a neglected historic monument. This is Barnaderg Castle, County Galway, a five-storey tower house believed to have been built by Malachy O’Kelly in the 16th century. Standing on a low mound and in an area prone to flooding, even in summer, the building was probably once entirely surrounded by water and reached via a drawbridge. Today, only three sides of the tower house survive, the south being entirely gone and those on both the west and east (where a mullioned window can be seen on the fourth floor) are vulnerable.



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Norman Wisdom


Nine years ago, Wexford County Council opened the first phase of ‘The Norman Way’, a 65-kilometer self-guided heritage trail along the south-east coast, which leads to a variety of mediaeval buildings in diverse stages of repair. According to the website promoting this route, while the Normans invaded England in 1066, ‘a century later they came to Ireland,’ thereby suggesting that their arrival in this country was an altogether peaceable affair. Furthermore, apparently, ‘as generations of Normans made their home here, their Norman way of doing things enhanced everyday life in Ireland.’ It’s open to question whether the native Irish were delighted to welcome the arrival of Norman wisdom. As Tony Canavan of History Ireland has observed, ‘from a historian’s point of view, on the trail’s website and information panels, ‘the presentation of the Normans (setting aside questions of definition) may raise an eyebrow’ since they are portrayed not as invaders but as though they were modern-day immigrants. It is easy to understand the appeal of creating such a route – the official site expresses hope that this initiative will stimulate commercial and community benefits in the areas through which it runs – but this ought not to be at the expense of historical accuracy. 





Although of Norman origin and hard to miss as it rises above the flat Wexford countryside, Ballyteige Castle is not one of the sites included in The Norman Way. For several hundred years, this was one of the seats of the Anglo-Norman Whitty family, with references to its members being found in Irish documents from 1247 onwards; in 1418 Robert Whitty of Ballyteige became Bishop of Ferns, an office he held for the next 40 years. The original castle is said to have been burned by Art Mac Murrough Kavanagh in 1408, so what can be seen today – a four-storey tower house – was constructed after that date. What makes the site particularly fascinating, and important, is that so much remains, including much of the bawn wall and two large circular towers at the north-east and north-west. Attached to the tower house and running along the east side is a later house, now abandoned and boarded up, and behind this is what would have been a substantial courtyard enclosed by the western wall. It is known that the Whittys remained in occupation of Ballyteige until the mid-1650s when, like so many other Roman Catholics, Richard Whitty had the property taken from him. Ballyteige was then granted to the Colcloughs of nearby Tintern Abbey (see The Little Sister « The Irish Aesthete) and it was later sold to an Edward Meadows. It appears to have been occupied until relatively recently, but is now abandoned and falling into dereliction. 





Some two miles north-east of Ballyteige Castle can be found a cemetery surrounding what remains of a mediaeval church called Grange, thereby suggesting it was once part of a monastic estate. On the church’s interior north wall is a large and well-preserved monument to Walter Whitty of Ballyteige. In April 1594 he had been kidnapped by Spanish sailors whose vessel was then passing along the Wexford coast, and carried back to their country after they declined payment for his release, declaring that ‘they desired more the credit in Spain of having taken a great gentleman prisoner, than any ever so great ransom.’ (cited in Journal of the Waterford & South-East of Ireland Archaeological Society, Vol IV, 1898). Somehow, Walter Whitty managed to find his way back home and spend the rest of his days at Ballyteige where he died in 1630, but the marble monument inside the church dates from 1647. The Whitty coat of arms features a lion rampant, but locals, perhaps unfamiliar with these animals, preferred to believe it was a cat. This, in turn, gave rise to a legend that a feline murderer was responsible for Whitty’s demise. There seem to be two versions of the story. In one, Walter Whitty, having failed to shoot any rabbits while hunting, took out his wrath on a cat he saw sitting on a sandbank. When he returned home to Ballyteige Castle, a cat on the premises took its revenge by lunging at his throat and killing him. In the other version, Whitty seduced the daughter of a local witch and then, having taken her out to see in a boat, drowned the girl. Hearing of this, the witch transformed herself into a cat, lunged at Whitty’s throat and killed him. Strangely, neither account features in the Norman Way literature. Neither does Ballyteige Castle, which could benefit from official attention as a building that holds evidence of human habitation across many centuries, from the Normans to the present day. 

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A Picturesque Feature



Named after John Audley who owned the property in the 16th century, Audley’s Castle, County Down dates from the middle of the previous century when constructed on a rocky site high above Strangford Lough. Still retaining its bawn wall, on the south side the building has two projecting towers linked at roof level by an arch. In 1646 the castle was sold to BernardWard family whose descendants in the 18th century, built a new residence – Castleward (see A Special Friendship « The Irish Aesthete) – after which this building became a picturesque feature of the demesne at the end of a long canal.



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Two Ruins, One Site


Located in County Meath, but close to the border with County Offaly, Castlejordan is said to take its name from a man named Jordan, but who he might have been is open to conjecture. One suggestion is that he was a Norman knight called Jordan de Courcy, a relative (possibly a son) of John de Courcy who in the late 12th century conquered much of eastern Ulster. According to this story, following the senior de Courcy’s downfall, Jordan fled or was exiled to Exeter but later returned to Ireland and erected a fortress which came to be known as Castlejordan. The alternative version is that the place owes its origins to a later settler, Jordan Comyn who is held to have founded an Augustinian Priory a few miles away at Ballyboggan. 





Found beside the river Monagh, by their scale the ruins of Castlejordan indicate that this was once a fortress of some importance, used to defend the inhabitants of the Pale against incursions by the local O’Connor family. It appears that during the 16th century, the castle regularly changed hands between the English and Irish, although towards the end of the Tudor period it was held by Sir Henry Duke. Following his death in 1595, the property was inherited by one of Duke’s daughters, Mary who married Richard Gifford, and it would appear their descendants remained living in the area until the early 19th century, although the castle came under attack several times during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s. How much of the building survived from this period is open to question: by 1837, in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland, when writing about Castlejordan, Samuel Lewis simply noted ‘here are the ruins of a castle, formerly occupied by the Giffords.’ The last member of the family associated with the site appears to have been Marie Giffard (note the slight difference in spelling of the surname by the late 18th century). She married Frederick William Lewis Augustus, Count de Lusi, who from 1834-38 served as Prussian Envoy Extraordinary to the Court of Greece. What remains of the castle is in two parts. That closer to the river is a squat, three storey structure, the north-west front flanked by a pair of circular towers, and with tall chimneys on two gable ends. This might be considered complete in itself, but rather strangely, some distance to the south is another structure, a single tall, slender tower at least five storeys high and with masonry on one side indicating it was once part of a bigger building (but now forming the backdrop to a private garden, rather like a modern version of the 18th century folly). Has Castlejordan castle been the subject of a detailed study or archaeological survey? It would seem not, but any further information on the place would be fascinating to see. 




A short distance to the west of the old castle lies another ruin, this time of a Church of Ireland church. Samuel Lewis advised readers that this was built in 1826, likely on the site of an earlier place of worship, since records survive showing that services were held in Castlejordan during the 17th and 18th centuries: In 1693, for example, the church and chancel here were recorded as being in good repair. According to Lewis, the new building was constructed at a cost of £664, 12 shillings and one penny. On the other hand, the Parliamentary Directory of 1846 gives a figure of £923, one shilling and six and a half pence. Both sources agree that the expense was borne thanks to a loan from the Board of First Fruits, and the later document also provides the helpful information that while the church could hold 100 persons, attendance averaged 40. Meanwhile, the Roman Catholic chapel had an attendance of 600. As the Parliamentary Directory noted, while the Protestants of the parish amounted to 60, the number of Roman Catholics was 4,024. By the early 20th century, the church in Castlejordan was united with a number of other parishes and eventually closed for services in 1978. Today, just the tower which would have stood at the west end of the building, still remains in place, like a response to the singular tall tower of the older castle to the south.  

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An Uncertain Attribution



Dating from the end of the 15th century, Farney Castle, County Tipperary began as one of the circular tower houses that are predominantly found in this part of the country. Originally owned by the Butler family, following the restoration of Charles II in 1660, the property were leased to Captain William Armstrong whose father, Sir Thomas Armstrong, had served in Ireland as colonel of the Horse in support of Charles I during the course of the Confederate Wars, and had been twice imprisoned by Oliver Cromwell. The Armstrongs would remain here until the 19th century, buying out the Farney lease and acquiring further lands in the area, including those of the nearby Holy Cross Abbey. At some date in the early 19th century, the old castle was greatly extended by the addition of a five bay, two-storey over raised basement house at the south-east end of which is a polygonal four-storey tower. In a loosely Tudorbethan style, there is uncertainty about who might have been the architect responsible, with William Vitruvius Morrison mentioned but also Charles Frederick Anderson, who worked a lot in this part of the country before emigrating in 1849 to the United States where he had a successful practice in New York and Washington, D.C. The Armstrongs remained in residence at Farney until the late 19th century when the property was sold. Today it is owned by the designer Cyril Cullen. 



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Castle Hackett


Castle Hackett, County Galway dates back to the 13th century when, as the name indicates, it was built by the Anglo-Norman Hacketts who had arrived in the country during the previous century and mostly settled in the south-east (for example, in County Carlow, where the settlement of Hacketstown testifies to their presence). By the 15th century, the castle had passed into the possession of the Kirwan family, one of the 14 Tribes of Galway and the only one to be considered of Gaelic origin. They continued to occupy the building until the early 18th century when a new house, also called Castle Hackett, was constructed nearby: this was burnt by anti-Treaty forces in 1923 but subsequently rebuilt. As for the old castle, still surrounded by portions of a bawn wall, it makes for a striking ruin on the landscape.


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