Category Archives: Ruins

Shades of Gray


Few old ruins in Ireland are as dramatically situated as Graystown Castle, County Tipperary. Perched on an outcrop of limestone rock, to its immediate west the land drops steeply towards the Clashawley river, the castle offering views of the surrounding countryside for several miles. There appears to be some dispute about how it came to be called Graystown, one suggestion being that this is a corruption of the name of Raymond le Gros, one of the first Norman knights to arrive in Ireland; he would come to own large swathes of land in the south-east of the country and is said to have been buried at Molana Abbey, County Waterford (see A Diligent Divine « The Irish Aesthete). On the other hand, it seems more likely that a Norman family called de Grey gave their name to the place. The history of Graystown becomes clearer after 1305 when 120 acres of land here was acquired by Henry Laffan, a clerk closely associated with the powerful Butler family. Despite various disturbances and upheavals, he and his descendants would continue to occupy the site for more than 300 years. 




As mentioned, the Laffans were based at Graystown for several centuries, although their relationship with the Butlers appears to have deteriorated: : in 1524, James Laffan of Graystown was among the freeholders of Tipperary, who complained to Henry VIII of the ‘extortions, coyne and livery’ levied on them by Sir James Butler of Kiltinan and Sir Edmond Butler of Cahir as deputies of the Earl of Ormonde. Still, they managed to stay in place. In 1613, Thomas Laffan of Graystown was a member of the Irish Parliament for Tipperary and in 1640 Henry Laffan held some 3,200 acres of land in the area.  In the Civil Survey of 1654, Graystown is described as follows: ‘Upon this land standeth a good castle, a slate house wantinge repaire with a large bawne & severall cabbins.’ Henry Laffan’s son Marcus served as Commissioner of troops and taxes in the barony of Slieveardagh. However, in the following decade, the Laffans’ land was seized from them by the Commonwealth government and the family was transplanted to East Galway, being settled near Ballinasloe. Graystown was granted to one Gyles Cooke who is listed as proprietor of the place in the 1659 Census of Ireland. And thereafter there is little information about the castle: in Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837) he mentions its ‘remains’, indicating that the building had become ruinous by that date, as it remains to the present. 




Text here. As mentioned, Graystown Castle is wonderfully sited on the edge of a limestone escarpment, the north-west of the building – where an arched entrance is located – seeming to teeter right on the edge of the outcrop. Some sections of a bawn wall survive but much has been lost, as with the castle itself. This looks to have been a typical tower house from the late 16th/16th centuries, rectangular in form, of four storeys and rising some 60 feet high. A large portion of the south wall has gone, leaving the interior exposed and showing the layout of the different floors and the form of the vaulted chambers on various levels. To the immediate north of the castle is a three-storey gable wall, the only section of what was presumably a later mansion, perhaps constructed by the Laffans in the first half of the 17th century before the country was overwhelmed with warfare and destruction. This must be what survives of the ‘slate house wantinge repaire’ mentioned in the 1654 Civil Survey. The same document also refers to a number of cabins, indicating there was once some kind of village in the immediate vicinity, but of this there is no trace.

Founding Fathers


There seems to be some dispute over who founded a monastery at Drumlane, County Cavan, the two potential candidates being St Columba and Saint Máedóc of Ferns. If the former, then a religious house would have been established here in the mid-sixth century, if the latter then the date would be somewhat later. In any case, not a lot now remains to show how important this monastery had once been; at its height, Drumlane was the richest ecclesiastical establishment in this part of the country. The church is thought to be mid-12th century and in the aftermath of the Reformation continued to be used for services by the Church of Ireland until 1821 when a new church was built and this one unroofed. The adjacent truncated round tower, probably 11th century, is missing its upper section and now rises 38 feet.


Abandoned


In August 1189 William Marshall married Isabel de Clare, heiress of Richard de Clare, otherwise known as Strongbow, and through his wife came to be one of the greatest Anglo-Norman landowners in Ireland. The couple would have ten children, five of them sons, which would seem to have secured the family’s future, except for a bishop’s curse. At some date between 1207 and 1213, Marshall, by then Earl of Pembroke, seized two manors belonging to Albin O’Molloy (Ailbe Ua Maíl Mhuaidh) and refused to return them. For this slight, O’Molloy excommunicated him and, in the aftermath of Marshall’s death, when his children still held onto the manors, the bishop is supposed to have laid a curse on them, declaring that none of the sons would have heirs and that the great Marshall estates would be scattered. And so it came to pass: although each of the five brothers became Earl of Pembroke, they all died without legitimate children and eventually their father’s property was divided between their sisters and the latters’ children, leading to the break-up of the great Marshall estate, just as the Bishop of Ferns had declared. 






Around 1207 Maud, eldest daughter of William Marshall and Isabel de Clare, married Hugh Bigod, third Earl of Norfolk: incidentally, it was through this marriage that the position of Earl Marshall of England would come to be held by the Dukes of Norfolk. Furthermore, as a result of the marriage, the Bigods came to own large areas of land in what is now County Carlow and when Roger, fifth Earl of Norfolk visited Ireland in 1279, it is thought that he embarked on constructing a large stronghold for himself, now known as Ballymoon Castle, the remains of which can be seen here. In his book on the Bigods during the 13th century, Marc Morris proposes that the building’s purpose was not intended to be defensive. ‘Built on a scale which presupposes a patron in need of extensive accommodation and with considerable resources at his disposal,’ Ballymoon was ‘intended to function as a residence more than a fortress.’ Morris points out that there is no ditch around the site and no projecting towers; the only breakfronts on the walls contained latrines. A cousin of the MacMurroughs, with whom he seems to have been on good terms, Roger Bigod did not face militant opposition on Carlow, hence there was no need for a protective citadel. 






Ballymoon Castle consists of a single square courtyard about 80 feet long on each side, the rough-hewn granite outer walls being some eight feet thick at the base and climbing 20 feet, although their uneven appearance indicates they were once higher and perhaps finished with crenellations and walks. The big, empty courtyard has the remains of buildings on each of its four sides, some of which indicate where doors or chimneypieces were once placed. The western wall has an arched gateway with portcullis grooves visible, and there are quite a few cross-shaped openings around the other walls. It may be that work here was never finished: by the autumn of 1280 Roger Bigod was back in England. And two years later, his cousins, Art and Muchertach MacMurrough, were murdered in Arklow on the instructions of the Justiciar of Ireland, Stephen de Fulbourn. When Roger Bigod died in 1306, despite two marriages, like his Marshall forebears he had no heirs, so the direct line ended, his lands were escheated to the crown and eventually bestowed on Thomas of Brotherton, Earl of Norfolk, a younger son of Edward I. Little is known thereafter of Ballymoon Castle’s history, but, having little defensive potential, it would appear to have been abandoned and left to fall into its present condition.

Tripartite


The so-called abbey in Mungret, County Limerick. There had been a monastery here, supposedly founded in the mid-sixth century by Saint Nessan, but due to frequent assault and despoliation over subsequent centuries, no trace of the original buildings survives.  Instead, what can be found here dates back to the 12th and 13th centuries. In 1179 Donal Mór O Brien, King of Leinster granted the monastery and its lands to the Bishop of Limerick, and this subsequently became a parish church for Augustinian Canons Regular. The building is divided into three sections, the oldest part at the east end being the chancel, followed by the nave and then, at the west end, a square tower added in the 15th century and incorporating living quarters for a priest. Following the 16th century Reformation, the building continued to be used by the Church of Ireland until replaced by a new church designed by the Pain brothers in 1822 and located a short distance to the west of the older structure. The Pains’ work  – which took the form of a Greek cross – did not survive long, since falling numbers of parishioners meant the new church at Mungret closed just 55 years later in 1877, before being unroofed in 1900, with much of the stone then reused to build a parochial house in nearby Raheen. 


A Melancholy Centenary

Ardfert Abbey

Last weekend marked the centenary of the final burning of a big house in County Kerry during the War of Independence/Civil War period, the property in question being Ballycarty, which lay to the south-west of Tralee and had been occupied by the Nash family since the third quarter of the 18th century. In total, 15 such houses in the county were destroyed during the period 1920-23, a list of these appearing in the recently published The Big House in Kerry: A Social History edited by Jane O’Hea O’Keeffe. Amid the 18 properties examined in individual chapters by different authors, four of them are among those lost at the time: Kilmorna (burnt April 1921 and its occupant Sir Arthur Vicars killed), Ballyheigue Castle (burnt May 1921, see Particularly Commodious « The Irish Aesthete), Ardfert Abbey (burnt August 1922) and Derryquin (burnt August 1922). 

Glenbeigh Castle


Ballyheigue Castle

In a fascinating chapter at the start of The Big House in Kerry, historian John Knightly looks at ‘The Destruction of the Big House in Kerry 1920-23’ and the various reasons for these properties being burnt. He proposes that the destruction of two houses was due to suspicions that they might be used by British forces, seven were burnt as a result of land agitation, and six the consequence of looting. It is clear that in the aftermath of the First World War and the economic depression that followed, a large number of agricultural workers found themselves in dire circumstances, leading to agrarian unrest. Initially much of this took place in north Kerry with attacks made on large farms, popularly known as ‘ranches.’ The persons involved sought for these land holdings to be broken up and divided into small parcels for distribution among the local populace. By this time, taking advantage of schemes such as the 1903 Wyndham Act, many estate owners had sold the greater part of their land and only held onto the immediate demesne. Some owners, in the face of threatened or actual attacks on their property, sought to sell up and leave, although given the real or incipient violence, purchasers were not easy to find. A number of owners simply decided to leave. In north Kerry, Rose Trent-Stoughton, last owner of Ballyhorgan, who had already sold much of the estate under the terms of the Wyndham Act, organised for the house’s contents to be auctioned in April 1919. Since she, by then an elderly woman, was living in England, the building was vulnerable to theft: in March 1920 two men were charged at Listowel District Court for removing boards, door frames and a gate from Ballyhorgan. Two months later, the house, dating from the 1750s, was set alight and left a shell: the first of such arson attacks in Kerry. The remains were later demolished and nothing now remains. Glenbeigh Castle, otherwise known as Winn Towers, was next: like Ballyhorgan, it was unoccupied but in this case rumours had spread that the building was due to be taken over by a British regiment. Having stood empty for some time, the castle, designed by Edward Godwin in the 1860s, did not burn easily. The leader of those responsible for its destruction later wrote ‘after sprinkling twelve tins of petrol over the floors, it refused to light, and at dawn I was faced with a problem. It was damp, old and much of it stonework. I noted a lot of shrub nearby, and sent the men to collect and fill up one room with it…’ And so it went on, often in waves, with a series of attacks in spring 1920, another during the same period the following year, a third in summer/autumn 1922 and then, closing the sequence, Ballycarty in January 1923. 


Ardtully


Flesk Castle

It is important to note that while their destruction should be lamented, only 15 Kerry country houses were burnt in the years 1920-23. In another, introductory chapter, John Knightly observes that at the start of the last century there were some 115 properties in the county. These varied in size and age, and the amount of land holdings differed considerably. Three families – the Petty-FitzMaurices, Brownes and de Moleyns – owned estates running to almost 100,000 each, but others might have a few hundred acres. Inevitably, most of them were members of the Church of Ireland but a few, not least the Earl of Kenmare, were Roman Catholic: interestingly in 1913/14 the local president of the Irish Unionist Alliance – formed to oppose home rule – was the aforementioned Lord Kenmare. Knightly estimates that out of a county population of 160,000 in 1911, perhaps between 700 and 1,000 were members of this landed elite. The situation soon began to change, the burnings of 1920-23 being just one factor in this transformation. As Knighty comments, ‘Ultimately, the Land Commission and the Irish State were responsible for more big houses than the War of Independence and Civil War combined. The process begun in 1879 at the start of the Land War was thus completed over 100 years later. High taxes, high rates and falling incomes did the rest.’ Typical in this respect is Flesk Castle, abandoned in the 1940s (although now happily being brought back to use). Knightly notes that today only four Kerry houses remain in the hands of the family responsible for their construction. But others happily survive, such as Beaufort (subject of a chapter by Donald Cameron), a picture of which can be seen below.

Beaufort House

The Big House in Kerry: A Social History, edited by Jane O’Hea O’Keeffe is published by Irish Life and Lore (€39.00)

The Real Thing



After last Monday’s fake castle, here is the real thing. Now situated on the north bank of the Grand Canal (which would not have existed at the time of its construction), this is the four-storey Srah Castle, County Offaly which dates from 1588 when built by Andrew Briscoe and his wife Eleanor Kearney. As was typical of tower houses of the period, it has a battered base, machiolation directly above the single, round-headed entrance, a series of gun-loops and a bartizan on the south-west corner (its match on the north-east has since collapsed, leaving a large hole in the structure). To the immediate west are the remains of a large hall, of which little other than one gable end survives. Seemingly the castle was badly damaged during the Confederate Wars and never recovered, the Briscoes moving elsewhere in the county.


When All Those Rooms and Passages Are Gone



A handsome ashlar limestone triumphal arch marking the former entrance into the Johnstown estate, County Tipperary. This structure presumably dates from the last quarter of the 18th century and was erected at the same time as the main house, commissioned for Peter Holmes, M.P. for Banagher, County Offaly in the Irish House of Commons. In typical fashion of the time, he called the place after himself: Peterfield. Members of his family continued to live there until 1865 when the estate was bought for more than £13,000 by William Headech. He had arrived in Ireland around a quarter-century earlier as secretary to the Imperial Slate Quarry Company at Portroe. Headech later bought the company and made a fortune from slate production, allowing him to buy Peterfield, which he renamed Johnstown.



Headech’s descendants continued to live at Johnstown until the 1930s when the property was acquired by the Land Commission. The house, of three storeys over basement and believed to have been designed by architect William Leeson, was unroofed in 1941 and then demolished a couple of decades later, so that today just fragments of this fine property remain.
Below are two older images of the Johnstown, the first taken from a late 18th century engraving by Jonathan Fisher made when the property was still called Peterfield, the second, a photograph by the late Paddy Rossmore, taken in the 1960s when the building, although roofless, was still standing.
Lines from Yeats’ Coole Park come to mind:
‘Here, traveller, scholar, poet take your stand,
When all those rooms and passages are gone,
When nettles wave upon a shapeless mound
And saplings root among the broken stone…’

Plainly Ruined



The remains of a church that was once part of a Carmelite monastery in Castlelyons, County Cork. This religious house was established in 1309 by John de Barry, but much of what can be seen today dates from the following century. Although sections of the cloister also survive, the church is the most substantial extant part of the site, a long nave separated from the chancel by a semi-ruinous three-story crossing tower. The building’s best-preserved details can be found on the west front, featuring a pointed doorway with hoodmoulded surround below a twin-light, ogee-headed window.

The Largest and Richest Earl’s House in Ireland


‘Maynooth Castle was the original residence of the Kildare family. The manor of Maynooth in 1176 was granted by Strongbow to Maurice Fitz-Gerald, who erected the castle for protection against the incursions of the natives. His son Gerald, first Baron of Offaly, obtained from John, Lord of Ireland, son of Henry II, a new grant of sundry lordships. Thomas, second Earl, was married to a daughter of the Red Earl of Ulster, and sister to Ellen, the wife of Robert Bruce, King of Scotland. During the latter half of the fourteenth century, Maynooth was one of the border fortresses of the Pale, or English possessions, in the defence of which Maurice, fourth Earl of Kildare, distinguished himself. John, the sixth Earl, enlarged the castle (1426) and it was then said to be “the largest and richest earl’s house in Ireland”.’
From an article on Carton in The Journal of Horticulture and Cottage Gardener, Vol.22, May 16, 1872. 





‘In March 1535 the new Earl of Kildare had with him 120 horse, 240 gallowglasses and 500 kerns. Leaving Maynooth Castle strongly fortified in the hands of his foster brother and confidante Christopher Pareses, he went into Offaly to raise additional adherents for the summer campaign. Skeffington [Sir William Skeffington, then Lord Deputy of Ireland] invested Maynooth Castle of the 14th March, and on the 23rd Parese, consenting to betray his trust, permitted the outer defences to be taken without resistance, after which the keep was carried by assault. A park of heavy artillery, brought up to the siege by the English, and for which the Anglo-Irish were quite unprepared, had no small effect in compelling such a speedy surrender of a place the Earl of Kildare regarded as almost impregnable. Of the garrison, twenty-five were beheaded and one hanged, as it was thought dangerous to spare skilled soldiers. “Great and rich was the spoile, such store of beddes, so many goodly hangings, so rich a wardrobe, such brave furniture, as truly it was accounted, for household stuffe and utensils, one of the richest earl his houses under the crown of England.” Pareses, to increase the estimation in which his treachery should be regarded, dwelt on the trust and confidence bestowed on him; and Stanihurst tells us how his treachery was rewarded; “The Deputy gave his officers to deliver Parese the sum of money that was promised, and after to choppe off his head”.’
From an account of the Rebellion of Silken Thomas and the Siege of Maynooth given in A Compendium of Irish Biography by Alfred Webb, Dublin, 1878.





‘On the 7th January, 1642 a party of Catholics seized and pillaged Maynooth Castle, carrying off the furniture and the library, which was of great value; all the stock, including thirty-nine English cows and oxen, thirty horses worth £270, household goods worth at least £200, and corn and hay worth £300; they also deprived him of rents amounting to at least £600 a year. The castle was soon retaken, but in 1646 was occupied by a detachment sent for that purpose by the Catholic general, Preston [Thomas Preston, first Viscount Tara], when he was advancing against Dublin, and on his retreat it was dismantled, and has never since been inhabited.’
From The Earls of Kildare and Their Ancestors from 1057 to 1773 by the Marquis of Kildare (future fourth Duke of Leinster), Dublin, 1858.

Sent Up in Flames


‘Many a time I walked for three or four hours without meeting even one human being. Here and there a stately mansion, around it the gate lodge of the serf, the winding avenue, the spreading oaks, and the green fields in which no man was visible. Landlordism, the willing instrument of British rule, had wrought this desolation. I renewed my resolve to do my share in bringing about the change that must come sooner or later.’
Dan Breen, My Fight for Irish Freedom (1924) 





‘“I’ll bloody well settle that: six big houses and castles of their friends, the Imperialists, will go up for this. I don’t know what GHQ will do – but I don’t give a damn.” We selected six houses and castles from the half-inch map, then sent off the order.’
Ernie O’Malley quoting Liam Lynch in On Another Man’s Wound (1936)





‘Castles, mansions and residences were sent up in flames by the IRA immediately after the British fire gangs had razed the homes of Irish Republicans. Our people were suffering in this competition of terror, but the British Loyalists were paying dearly, the demesne walls were tumbling and the British ascendancy was being destroyed. Our only fear was that, as time went on, there would be no more Loyalist’s homes to destroy, for we intended to go on to the bitter end. If the Republicans of West Cork were to be homeless and without shelter, then so too would be the British supporters. ‘
Tom Barry, Guerilla Days in Ireland (1949)

Photographs show Deel Castle, County Mayo, formerly owned by the Gore family, Earls of Arran, and burnt by the IRA in September 1921.