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.
The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by
Category Archives: Tipperary
Playing Peekaboo
After Monday’s post about Ardfinnan Castle, here are the remains of a religious house found a little to the south on the other side of the river Suir. This is known as Lady’s Abbey, a Carmelite friary dating from the early 14th century and most likely closed down just over 200 years later during the Dissolution of the Monasteries. Little survives other than the walls of the church which has a nave separated by a central tower from the chancel concluding in a two-light east window. A south transept also contains a window, the jambs of which feature a carved head, one of a bearded man, the other looking distinctly unhappy, perhaps because he and his companion are now almost lost in the dense ivy that covers so much of the building.
The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by
An Impression of Grandeur and Picturesqueness
For many years, the Irish Aesthete has driven past a castle in County Tipperary and wondered about its history. No need to wonder any more: the Irish Penny Journal, Vol.1, No.44, published in May 1841 carries a long and somewhat rambling account of the history of this building, Ardfinnan Castle. It stands on the site of, or close to, a religious settlement said to have been established in the seventh century by Saint Finian (hence the name Ard Fhíonáin, meaning ‘Fíonán’s height’). The journal’s anonymous author comments that ‘the traveller must have been a dull and unobserving one who, journeying between Cork and Dublin by way of Cahir, has not had his attention roused by its romantic features and an impression of its grandeur and picturesqueness made upon his memory, not easily to be effaced. Ardfinnan is indeed one of the finest scenes of its kind to be found in Ireland, and is almost equally imposing from every point of view from which it can be viewed. The Castle crowns the summit of a lofty and precipitous rock, below and around which the Suir winds it way in graceful beauty, while its banks are connected by a long and level bridge of fourteen arches which tradition states is of coeval erection with the fortress and which, at all events, is of very great antiquity. On every side the most magnificent outlines of mountain scenery form the distant back-ground; and every object which meets the eye is in perfect harmony with the general character of the scene.’ Rather like the river Suir, the text further meanders before explaining that Ardfinnan Castle was constructed in 1185 by Prince John, ‘of whom it has been remarked that he achieved nothing during his stay of eight months in Ireland but the construction of this and two other castles, namely Lismore and Tiobrad Fachtna, now Tibraghny on the Suir, which he erected with a view to the conquest of Munster. From these castles he sent parties in various directions to plunder the country; but being met by the Irish under the command of Donall O’Brien, Dermod Mac Carthy and Roderick O’Conor, they were defeated with great slaughter, four knights having been killed at Ardfinnan, after which John was glad to return to England.’
When the Irish Penny Journal text appeared, Ardfinnan Castle had fallen into ruin but serious damage to the building had only occurred in the 17th century. Long before then, the castle had a close association with monastic military orders, first the Knights Templar and then the Knights Hospitaller. Ardfinnan’s first Governor, the Cambro-Norman knight Maurice de Prendergast, was also Grand Prior of the Knights Hospitaller in Ireland and in 1177 he had granted Prendergast Castle and surrounding land in his native Pembrokeshire to the order. A large circular keep immediately inside the castle’s bawn wall and beside the main gateway is said to have been constructed by the Knights Hospitaller in the early 13th century. Alterations occurred c.1450 when a square, four storey tower house was built on the south-east corner, directly above the river. The military order remained here until the upheavals of the 16th century, after which it passed through several different hands, at one point both Theobold Butler, Lord Caher and the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore disputing rights of ownership. The real trouble began during the Confederate Wars when the castle was held by its Governor, Captain David Fitzgibbon, a descendant of the White Knights and married to the widowed Joanna Butler, member of the area’s most powerful family. In early February 1659 Fitzgibbon was resident in Ardfinnan with a small force when it came under attack by the Cromwellian general Henry Ireton. Initially he was able to hold out, but once Ireton brought cannon onto a hill opposite the castle, its walls were breached his troops were able to gain access, and Fitzgibbon obliged to surrender: while his life was spared, his lands were confiscated and he was transplanted to the west of Ireland. Meanwhile, before Ireton’s army moved on and in order to ensure the castle could not fall back into the opposition’s hands, it was deliberately left in a state of semi-ruin. By 1654, the property had once again returned into the possession of the Bishop of Waterford and Lismore, and was leased to another member of the extensive Butler family. Despite its poor condition, once more because of its position above the river Suir and owing to the ongoing threat of a French invasion, in 1795 the British government began to use the castle as an army barracks and continued to do so until 1802.
In Samuel Lewis’s invaluable Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837), the castle at Ardfinnan is described as a ruin occupying a picturesque and elevated site above the Suir, consisting of a fortified gateway and the greater part of the exterior walls which, then as now, are roughly parallelogram in form. Engravings, such as that published in the Irish Penny Journal four years later, show Lewis’s summary description to be correct. This might have remained the case, had not a branch of the Prendergast family, thought to be descendants of Maurice de Prendergast, first Governor of the castle, taken on the property along with 15 surrounding acres. Theresa Cornwallis J West, in her book A Summer Visit to Ireland in 1846 (1847), wrote that she saw ‘scaffolding and ladders, and workmen busily repairing the damages of time; building up walls and putting in windows.’ Much of what can be seen today therefore dates from this period, when the old castle became a family home. The interiors, with their stone chimneypieces and stained glass in some of the windows, represent the taste of the mid-19th century. Meanwhile, immediately below and beside the Suir, John Mulcahy, whose father-in-law owned a similar business elsewhere in the county at Rossmore, developed a woollen mill which had ancient origins, believed to date back at least to the era when the 12th century. For a long time, the building was hugely successful, employing large numbers of local people and exporting tweeds across the world: when Edward VII – who already wore Ardfinnan cloth – came to stay at Lismore Castle in 1904, he paid a visit to the mill. It continued in operation until 1973 when the mills closed down, many of its buildings now standing empty. More than half a century earlier the Mulcahys had bought the castle and made further alterations, including the addition of a flat-roofed wing at the south-west corner as well as rewiring and plumbing the property, adding bathrooms and a heating system. While remedial work has recently been undertaken on the main roof and elsewhere, little has otherwise changed, as the castle and some 17 acres of surrounding land now come up for sale. This is such an important building, with such a long and remarkable history, that it deserves to find a sympathetic new owner, one who will appreciate the necessity of ensuring Ardfinnan Castle’s future. It took many years for the Irish Aesthete to see the place, but this was well worth the wait.
A Reawakening
Regular visitors to this site will know that the Irish Aesthete is always delighted to learn of an historic property undergoing restoration, especially when this work is being tackled by private owners who intend to make the property a family home. Such is the case with the building seen here today: Knockelly Castle, County Tipperary. They have written a brief but helpful account of the site, which is reproduced below.
‘Knockelly is reputed to have been built by Edmund Fitz James Butler, 8th Baron Dunboyne for his second son Piers, with work commencing in c.1465. The castle remained within various lines of the Butler family until 1592, when Peter Oge Butler rebelled against the crown, and Knockelly was granted to Patrick Grant, a nominee of the 10th Earl of Ormond. By 1602, Knockelly was the property of Sir John Everard (d.1624), who was most likely responsible for the c1610 renovations. Everard was admitted to the Inner Temple in London in 1578, called to the bar in 1590, but returned to Ireland and had been made Justice of the Liberty of Tipperary by 1601.
Knockelly was retained within Everard lines until Sir Redmond Everard, 4th Baronet, supported the failed Jacobite rising of 1715 and had to flee to France where he lived out his days. During Sir Redmond’s exile, funds were short and Knockelly was occupied by a series of notable tenants, including the Jolly’s, the Lowes and the O’Callaghans, until the castle and entire Everard patrimony, was acquired by Thomas Barton, a powerful wine merchant, in c.1751.
The Barton estate included Grove, an important house and lands to the south, and Knockelly may have served as an agent’s house for the estate. It is believed the 1830 renovations to the Gatehouse may have happened then. Knockelly was eventually let to James Kickham, one of whose daughters, Catherine, married a Patrick Heffernan. The Bartons, whose estate had been reduced from 5,000 to 500 acres, sold Knockelly between 1904-1906 to the Heffernans, who lived there until the present owners purchased the property in 2020.’
Across more than 550 years, Knockelly has served a variety of roles ranging from a magnate’s stronghold to a land agent’s residence and, prior to its present owners taking possession, a very substantial farmyard. But over that long period of time, it has been in the custodianship of just five families and perhaps this helps to explain why so much of the original structures have survived, not least the great tower house which last underwent remodelling in 1610. This stands within an expansive bawn which was built in 1560, the still-intact walls incorporating gun turrets, bartizans and, on the south side, a gatetower. The last of these began as a simple two storey building through which access was gained to the interior of the enclosure. Over time this was enlarged and embellished, most recently in 1830, and turned into a house but evidence of its earliest function can still be found inside along with other tantalising hints of the house’s gradual evolution. Indeed, as the owners note, ‘the diverse range of buildings, built in different centuries, from different fabric and designed for different functions’, means that Knockelly offers a rare insight into social and architectural changes through the centuries in Ireland since the late Middle Ages.
When the present owners bought Knockelly Castle six years ago, the majority of buildings on the site were in a semi-ruinous condition, as is the case in so many other locations throughout Ireland. And, without intervention since the property’s purchase, it is most likely that further and perhaps irreversible deterioration would have taken place. Thankfully that has not been the case and instead since 2022 a programme of gradual restoration has been underway, not least with the gatetower house which is now a family home. Work is slow, dependent on funds being available, and using materials and techniques which are most sensitive and appropriate to the structures. Employing primarily stone, wood and lime, and engaging with craftspeople trained in traditional skills, Knockelly is reawakening and being brought back to full use. As the owners emphasise, ‘there are no quick fixes. We work for the long-term.’ Benefitting from their own knowledge and that of the workers with whom they engage, they now run a number of onsite traditional building skills workshops so that anyone else interested in undertaking a similar project can benefit from their experience. Knockelly Castle was the deserved recipient of the 2026 Historic Houses of Ireland Heritage Award 2026, sponsored by Castleacre Insurance.
For more information about the workshops run at Knockelly Castle, please see: Knockelly Conservation Workshops — Knockelly Castle
The Irish Aesthete is kindly supported by
Different Fates
The former Royal Irish Constabulary barracks in Mullinahone, County Tipperary dates from c.1850 and was variously occupied by that organisation, then the Black and Tans during the War of Independence before becoming the local Garda station. However, like many other such premises in small towns, it closed down some decades ago and then stood empty until bought in 2014 when work began turning the building into a private residence. While the interior was gutted, relatively little else was done before the property came back on the market four years ago. A recent planning application by an Irish cosmetics company proposes turning the old barracks into a manufacturing hub for its products. No such luck for another building on the opposite side of the street. This is said initially to have served as a watermill before housing militia and cavalry during the 1798 Rebellion. It was then used as a courthouse until 1922, while the rear of the property acted as a local butter market and communal hall. Despite being described by the National Built Heritage Service as ‘a building of considerable historic resonance in the county’ it has been allowed to fall into the present sad state and two years ago was placed on the local authority’s Derelict Sites register. .
The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by
The Butlers Did It (again)
A tower house dating from the late 15th or early 16th century, Grallagh Castle, County Tipperary, like so many other such structures in this part of the country, was for a long time associated with the Butler family: James Butler, tenth Baron of Dunboyne, bequeathed the property to his son in 1533. By the 18th century it had come into the possession of the Mansergh family. The partially ruined four-storey building is surrounded by some 100 feet of bawn wall still standing. On the exterior, there are bartizans in the north-east and south-west corners and a murder hole above the doorway on the west side. Inside, the ground floor has a barrel-vaulted ceiling and walls punctuated with arrow slits. A mural stairway leads to the upper floors featuring several two-light windows with window-seats, a fireplace and a garderobe.
The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by
A Partial Restoration
In the first decades of the 19th century, many old places of worship in Ireland were restored or rebuilt thanks to funds from the Board of First Fruits. In Lorrha, County Tipperary, St Ruadháns church is thought to have been constructed on the site of the early monastery founded by the eponymous Ruadhán in 540. On the south wall, an arched doorway features a carved head which may represent Walter de Burgh and have been taken from the nearby Augustinian Abbey (see Former Greatness « The Irish Aesthete). Below it, a pointed doorway with decoration was added in the 15th century; it is decorated with rose motifs, vine leaves and a pelican drawing blood from its breast. According to Samuel Lewis writing in 1837, the building had been ‘recently repaired by a grant of £113 from the Ecclesiastical Commissioners.’ While the nave was left a ruin, the chancel was restored to provide a church suitable for a relatively small congregation.
The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by
Little Changed
The origins of the Baker family in Ireland are unclear, but it would seem that Thomas Baker, an Englishman, came here and settled, likely in the first decades of the 17th century. Based in Knockordan, County Tipperary, he came to rent large areas of farmland in the vicinity, running to more than 3,730 acres, from local Roman Catholic owners. Disaster befell both them and their tenant in 1641 with the onset of the Confederate Wars: in the case of Baker and his family, they were besieged by the rebels and, following his death in February 1642, forced to surrender everything they had, down to their ‘wearing apparel’, before the family – a widow with six children – were turned out of doors. As for the owners of the land that Baker had rented, they too lost their property, divided up following the Down Survey in the following decade. However, because Thomas had loaned money to some of his landlords on the security of mortgages they had taken out against the properties he rented from them, his son Walter was able to lay claim to some of what had been lost and, in the years after the Restoration of 1660, the Bakers regained outright some of what had once been held only in leasehold. Thereafter they seem to have prospered and in October 1704, William Baker, a great-grandson of the original Thomas, purchased from Charles Blount – a grandson of one of the Down Survey commissioners – the lands on which Lismacue House now stands for the sum of £923. The original residence, long since gone, was one of the largest in this part of the country and with five hearths incurring a tax of 10 shillings, according to the 1665 hearth-money records.
Approached at the end of a long avenue of lime trees planted in the mid-18th century by Hugh Baker, the present house at Lismacue replaced an earlier residence elsewhere on the estate. This building was commissioned in 1813 by Hugh’s grandson William from Kilkenny architect William Robertson. However, the owner was not able to enjoy his new home for long because a short time later he was murdered. As reported by the Rev. William Burke in his History of Clonmel (1907), ‘The event, however, which stirred the county to its depths was the murder of William Baker of Lismacue. Returning from Cashel Sessions, November 27th, 1815, he was met by two men at the gates of Thomastown Park and shot through the head. Though a reward of £5,000 was offered, and though scores of suspected persons were lodged in the bridewells, the secret which was known to hundreds, was long kept and the efforts of the Crown baffled.’ Eventually, it seems, two men called Keating and Maher were imprisoned in Cahir where the former ‘through connivance or otherwise’, obtained some whisky which apparently loosened tongues. Their conversation being overheard, Keating was subsequently induced to give evidence, and Maher was hanged. Since the murdered man had no children, Lismacue was then inherited by his nephew, Hugh Baker who was still a minor at the time. He and his wife Marion Conyers were responsible for finishing the interiors now seen in the house. After his death in 1868, he was succeeded by his son, also called Hugh, but when the latter in turn died in 1887, the family almost lost everything as a result of needful land sales. Fortunately, the third Hugh’s widow, Frances Massy, remarried and her second husband, Major Ralph Bunbury, was able to buy Lismacue and the surrounding lands for what was described as a ‘low price’ so that the Bakers could continue to live there. Eventually, following the major’s death, his siblings transferred the place ‘on generous terms’ to one of the third Hugh’s sons, Charles Conyers Massy Baker. Today, Lismacue continues to be occupied by his descendants.
Designed in a mildly Tudorbethan style, Lismacue’s exterior is ornamented with hood mouldings over the windows, and dainty crenellations and pinnacles along the roofline. Of two storeys over-basement, the facade is three bays wide, the centre bay distinguished by a single-storey limestone Gothick porch supported by columns. A service wing to the immediate north looks as though it concludes in a chapel, since the gable here holds a large arched window with Gothick tracery. However, this is illusory, since the interior is divided into several floors. Inside, the same restrained use of Gothick ornament prevails, but the overall tone is late Georgian classical. Many of the main reception rooms still contain wallpapers first hung in the 1830s and indeed, the charm of Lismacue is precisely that, ever since built, successive owners have never been in a position to undertake largescale alterations. Little changed since first constructed, in spirit and style, it still retains the style and spirit of an early 19th century Irish country house.
The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by
In Circles
Synone Castle is another cylindrical tower house found in County Tipperary, not unlike that at Balief (see Beyond Balief « The Irish Aesthete) and Ballynahow (see Encircled « The Irish Aesthete). Surrounded by the remains of a bawn wall (within which stands a relatively new residence) and rising some 50 feet, the building is of four storeys with small openings on each floor and three machiolations at the top. There appears to be little information about the castle, said to have been built by the Butler family.
The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by
So Ruin’d by ye Wars
‘Of ye Cathedral at present ye Choir only is roof’d & in repair, which is indeed long & lofty; ye Stalls &c. plain; They were put up by Archbishop Palliser, who was in other particulars a Benefactor to this Fabrick, before His time so ruin’d by ye Wars, as to be unfit for divine Service. And even now, there is not above twice a year any Use made of it, that It is not kept so neat & clean as might be otherwise expected.’ This extract from the diary kept by John Loveday during a tour through parts of Ireland (as well as England, Wales and Scotland) in 1732 gives an account of the condition of the Rock of Cashel in County Tipperary at that time. St Patrick’s Rock, an outcrop erupting above the surrounding plains, was for many centuries both a stronghold of the Kings of Munster and the site of a great cathedral, the whole surrounded by stone walls. Like many religious buildings, it suffered neglect during the 16th century so that by 1607 it was described as being in a state of decay. Repair work on the building was then undertaken but all of these improvements would be undone during the Confederate Wars.
In 1647 Murrough O’Brien, first Earl of Inchiquin, president of Munster and commander of the parliamentary forces in that province, sought to bring it under his authority by embarking on a scorched earth policy. This would lead to him being known as ‘Murchadh na dTóiteán’ (Murrough of the Burnings). By September, Inchiquin and his army had reached Cashel where the citizenry – having received reports of terrible assaults inflicted by the force elsewhere in the surrounding area – took refuge within the walls of the Rock. When Inchiquin arrived, he called for those inside the enclosure to surrender within an hour. Believing it impregnable, they refused to do so, and accordingly an assault on the Rock began, with the parliamentary army gaining access inside the main compound, thereby forcing the defenders, estimated to number around 1,000, to take refuge within the church. Although held off at the doors, Inchiquin’s troops swarmed in through the building’s windows and then engaged in appalling acts of slaughter, so that only a handful of those inside survived. The church itself was stripped of anything valuable and according to legend, Inchiquin – whose forebear Brian Boru had been crowned High King of Ireland in the same place – made a mockery of the Roman Catholic faith by parading around in the bishop’s mitre. According to a contemporary, the Jesuit Provincial Fr Andrew Sall, ‘The large crucifix that towered above the entrance to the choir had its head, hands and feet cut off, the organ was broken, and the bells, whose chimes cheered our soldiers as they fought, were deprived of their clappers and their beautiful tone…All the passages, even the altars, chapels, sacristies, bell-tower steps, and seats were so thickly covered with corpses, that one could not walk a step without treading on a dead body.’
Some twenty years would pass before any work was undertaken on the Rock’s buildings: extant Chapter minutes for June 1667 record that timber should be procured ‘to rebuild the chancel or quire’ of the cathedral, the intention being to restore for Divine worship, not the entire fabric of the structure but just the choir and chancel. Gradually, over the next few decades, improvements were made to this part of the site. In 1674, for example, accounts show that £20 was spent on roofing the steeple but then the upheavals of the late 1680s caused further disruption and a halt to any further improvements here. Only in the second half of the 1690s did serious restoration commence again, with £80 being committed for the arching of the cathedral choir and other work, along with a contract being issued for the glazing and painting of the windows in this part of the old building. By the 1720s, regular services were taking place in the cathedral, or at least at its east end in the chancel and choir. In 1723 two silk curtains were provided for the stalls of the Dean and Precentor, and the following year £4 8s. was paid for a large Bible as well as two Books of Common Prayer for the Communion Table. Finally in 1730, Theophilus Bolton was officially enthroned in the building, seemingly the first Archbishop to do so in a long time. Bolton took a particular interest in the cathedral, writing to Jonathan Swift in April 1735, ‘I am now wholly employed in digging up rocks and making the way easier to the church, which if I can succeed in I design to repair a very venerable old fabric that was built here in the time of our ignorant (as we are pleased to call them) ancestors. I really intend to lay out a thousand pounds to preserve this old church ; and I am sure you would be of service to posterity if you assisted me in the doing of it.’ Whether Bolton actually embarked on this repair is unclear, but in any case, following his death in 1744 he was succeeded by Arthur Price, remembered as the man responsible for ensuring the cathedral would no longer be used for religious services. Price’s motivation for doing so is unclear: popular belief has it that his coach and four had trouble with the ascent and he therefore decided to embark on building a new cathedral on flat ground close to his palace. In any case, in September 1748, the Chapter met with the archbishop and drew up a memorial for presentation to the Lords Justices and Irish Privy Council. Amongst other points, this document noted that the cathedral was not only ‘so incommodiously situated that resort to it for Service was always difficult, and in tempestuous weather scarcely practicable’ but also that ‘There was no likelihood of it ever being repaired, owing to the inconvenience of the site, and also because there was no fund belonging to it sufficient thereto.’ Instead, it was proposed that the parish church of St John the Baptist be raised to cathedral status and thereby assume the role hitherto held by the building on the Rock. The Privy Council duly authorised this change, and in September, 1750, the Chapter ordered that the timber of the roof ‘and the other necessaries belonging to the old cathedral’ be taken down and deposited in some safe place, until the same could conveniently be employed for the enlargement and use of the new one only. It appears at least some of this wood was used as piles under the foundations of the new cathedral. But one last religious service was held in the building on the Rock, because on October 12th 1752, following Price’s death, his successor John Whitcombe ‘was this day enthroned as well in the ancient Cathedral- on the Rock as in the present Cathedral and Parochial Church.’ Thereafter, it was left to fall into disrepair.
The Irish Aesthete is generously supported by