Tag Archives: Irish Castle

Reopened



The Barry family can trace its links with Ireland back to 1183 when the Cambro-Norman knight Philip de Barry arrived here accompanied by his brother Gerald – otherwise known as the chronicler Giraldus Cambrensis – and a number of followers to take possession of extensive lands in what is now County Cork. The Barrys would go on to establish a number of bases throughout the region, one of which lay a few miles to the immediate east of Cork city and came to be known as Barryscourt. Formerly located by a long-since silted inlet to Cork harbour, there is evidence of a watermill having been built here as far back as the 7th century, while signs of more substantial occupation, perhaps an early fortification, are thought to date from c.1200. However, the present castle is believed to date from the late 14th/early 15th century, some time after the Norman keep but predating the subsequently ubiquitous tower house.






In 1581 Barryscourt Castle was inherited by David de Barry, 18th Baron Barry and fifth Viscount Buttevant whose father James had died in Dublin Castle, following his participation in the second Desmond Rebellion. It would appear that around this time David de Barry deliberately ‘defaced and despoiled’ the building in order to prevent it falling into the hands of Sir Walter Raleigh who coveted the property and, indeed, briefly occupied it. Following the suppression of the rebellion, in 1583 de Barry was able to regain possession of Barryscourt and embarked on an extensive programme of repair and improvement, so that a considerable part of what can be seen today dates from that time. This includes the substantial bawn wall measuring 54 by 48 metres around the castle, with substantial towers on the south-east, north-east and north-west corners, the last of these containing a hall and garderobe. Along the south wall are a number of farm buildings dating from the 19th century by which time the castle had long since been abandoned by the original owners.
David de Barry seems to have made this his main residence: in 1606, Sir John Davies, solicitor-general for Ireland, wrote ‘From Youghall we went to Cork, and dined by the way with the Viscount Barrie, who, at his castle at Barriecourt, gave us civil and plentiful entertainment.’ However, after de Barry’s death in 1617, his grandson David, future first Earl of Barrymore, chose to make another property, Castlelyons, the family’s principle seat (for more on this castle, see Decline and Fall « The Irish Aesthete).






Measuring some 15.3 by 10.7 metres the rectangular tower house at Barryscourt is one of the largest of its kind in Ireland, thought to be exceeded only by those at Bunratty, County Clare and Blarney, County Cork. As is common with such buildings, there was only one point of access, a door with pointed arch at the northern end of the east wall. This leads into a small lobby, with a staircase to the immediate north, leading to the first floor. Remaining on the entry level, much of the rest of the space is given over to a large chamber with pointe vault and lit only by deeply-set narrow windows to ensure as much protection as possible from external attack. The limited lighting on this floor contrasts with that above which is covered by a barrel-vault, replacing an earlier pointed vault, of which evidence remains survives at the south end. Here are somewhat larger windows, as well as a simple fireplace on the west wall. Smaller rooms to the north of this space served perhaps as kitchens and garderobes. The second floor holds the castle’s great hall, lit by much larger windows, that on the north wall carrying the date 1586. The great limestone chimneypiece carries the date 1588 and the initials DB, for David de Barry, and ER, for his first wife Ellen Roche. Also on this level is a vaulted chamber that served as a private chapel for the family, while above it was a bedroom for their use. Although no longer occupied by the Barrys, the building appears to have suffered damage during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s before the property passed into the hands of the Coppinger family (for more information on this family, see Holding Court « The Irish Aesthete) who built a house here, since gone. The castle itself fell into ruin and remained in this condition until 1987 and the establishment of a charity, the Barryscourt Trust, for the purpose of conserving and developing the site. The building subsequently passed into the care of the Office of Public Works which undertook further work before closing ten years ago. Happily, having undergone further renovation, Barryscourt Castle reopened to the public last month and – judging by a recent visit – looks to be a highly popular addition to heritage properties in this part of the country.



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A Work in Progress


‘Bremore, 9th June 1783, the castle of Bremore about a mile N.of Balbriggan is situated on a rising ground very near the sea and commands a delightful prospect therof. It seems rather a modern building with good limestone quoins,window frames, munnions etc,the door on the W,side is particularly neat,ornamented on each side with pilaster wch support a suitable pediment in the space of wch are two coat of arms parted and pale Vizt-Ermine, a border engrailed on the sinister side-Barnewall and a fess between 5 martins 3 and 2, on the dexter side.The lower part of this case. is very strong and arched in a very irregular manner and the whole appears to me to have been not many years ago inhabited. Besides a number of garden walls and such like inclosures, still to be traced, are the walls of a Chapel in which is nothing remarkable…..‘
Antiquary Austin Cooper, 1783






Located some twenty miles north of Dublin and overlooking the Irish Sea, Bremore is supposed to have been the location of a monastic settlement founded by St Molaga, a Welshman traditionally said to have introduced bee-keeping into Ireland. The ruins of a late-medieval church called St Molaga’s are located to the immediate south of Bremore Castle for which it served as a manorial chapel. As for the castle, or at least the lands on which it now stands, the earliest reference appears to date from c.1300 when one Willam Rosel de Brimor is referred to in the Calendar of Documents Relating to Ireland. More definitely, in 1316 Wolfran de Barnewall married Nichola, daughter of Robert de Clahull, and through this alliance acquired large tracts of land in north county Dublin. The Barnewalls have been mentioned here before (see Fallen Out of Use « The Irish Aesthete. Incidentally, the 21st and last Baron Trimlestown died last year). Wolfran and his descendants were a cadet branch of this family. By the time of his son Reginald’s death some time before 1395, the Barnewalls were being described as lords of Bremore, Balrothery and Balbriggan, although their main residence was Drimnagh Castle, situated a couple of miles west of central Dublin.
In an inquisition of 1567 the estate at Bremore is stated to have consisted of ‘a castle, 8 messuages or buildings, a dovecote, 8 gardens and 132 acres’ and to have been held by Edward Barnewall of Drimnagh, ‘as of his manor of Balrothery.’ This is the earliest reference to a castle being located here.  A mid-16th century limestone mantel, now housed in St Macculin’s church but thought to have originally been made for the castle, celebrates the marriage of Edward Barnewall’s son James to Margaret St Lawrence, whose family lived at Howth Castle. The Barnewalls remained Roman Catholic during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s and in the Civil Survey carried out during the following decade, the property of Matthew Barnewall, ‘Irish Papist’, was described as containing ‘one burnt castle with a great barne and eight tenements, one orchard & parke with some young ash trees.’ His son James regained the estate in 1663 and presumably refurbished the building. However, he – or perhaps his son – had no male heirs, only a daughter Eleanor, who married Walter Bagenal in 1706. The link with the Barnewalls then ended as Bremore and its surrounding lands were sold for £7,000 to Henry Petty, Earl of Shelburne, from whom the property passed to the Petty-Fitzmaurices, Marquesses of Lansdowne. 






No longer occupied by its owners but instead let to tenants, Bremore Castle gradually fell into decay. Austin Cooper’s report of the building has already been cited. In 1837 Samuel Lewis noted ‘the ruins of Bremore castle, the ancient seat of a branch of the Barnewall family, consisting of some of the out-buildings and part of a chapel, with a burial ground, which is still used by some of the inhabitants’. John D’Alton in 1844 referred to ‘the ancient castle, of which traces are yet discernible’ and commanging ‘that sublime and extensive prospect over land and sea.’ By this time the castle was occupied by a tenant called John King and his descendants remained there until 1926, although Bremore Castle and its surrounding lands had been sold by the fifth Marquess of Lansdowne to the Land Commission in 1904. Another family acquired the building and remained there until finally the old building came into the possession of Dublin County Council in 1984. A decade later, following the break-up of that authority, the newly-created Fingal County Council became responsible for Bremore Castle. Since then, a programme of reconstruction, incorporating the opportunity to train stonemasons and other craftsmen and using traditional materials and methods, has been proceeding on the site. At the time of its initial construction in the 15th/16th century, Bremore Castle consisted of a rectangular hall-house with eastern flanking tower, a two storey extension being introduced on the north-western facade in the late 16th – early 17th century. Not a lot of this survived into the late 20th century. Today it has been rebuilt to an idealised version of a fortified house based on a sketch of the western view of the castle made by Austin Cooper in 1783, with a number of conjectural embellishments to both exterior and interior, the latter’s chimneypieces, doors and window openings in large measure being new additions inspired by examples of fortified houses from the 15th to 17th centuries surviving elsewhere in the country. It has been a long-running project and one that has yet to be finished. 


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Beyond Balief


The histories of some Irish buildings are easier to trace than others. The origins and owners of Balief Castle, County Kilkenny prove particularly elusive. It is commonly stated that the castle, actually another late-medieval tower house, was constructed by a member of the Shortall family. The Shortalls were of Norman origin, and settled in this part of the country in the late 13th century: a townland is still called Shortallstown. The Shortalls allied themselves with another, more powerful, dynasty, the Graces, Barons of Courtstown, and this helped to assure the possession of their lands. Both the Graces and the Shortalls remained loyal to the Roman Catholic faith and to the Stuart cause. In 1689, the then Baron of Courtstown raised and equipped a regiment of foot at his own expense to support James II during the Williamite Wars, and Thomas Shortall joined this force. When the baron died the following year, his son Robert Grace succeeded as head of the regiment but he was badly wounded at the Battle of Aughrim in July 1691 and died the following year. Nevertheless, the regiment continued to operate, with Captain Thomas Shortall commanding a company of 100 men at the second Siege of Limerick. Following the treaty concluded there in October 1691, Shortall like many others left Ireland and joined the French army. He is said to have continued to serve until the age of 88, and to have died in 1762 at the age of 104.




What happened to Balief Castle in the aftermath of the Williamite Wars is something of a mystery, but it appears to have passed into the hands of the St George family, which owned large estates in County Kilkenny. In Atkinson’s The Irish Tourist (1816) Balief Castle is described as being ‘the seat of Mr St. George’, presumably Robert St George whose father Sir Richard St George lived not far away at the since-demolished house of Woodsgift. However, it would seem there was another, more modern residence here, again no longer standing, since the earliest Ordnance Survey map shows ‘Balief House’ on or adjacent to the same site of the castle. Hercules Langrishe St George is later listed as owning the property, and being a local Justice of the Peace before Balief became occupied in the 1860s by Denis W Kavanagh, another gentleman whose family owned land in the area. Thereafter it is hard to find any more information about the place. 




Most Irish tower houses are either square or rectangular. Circular examples are relatively rare, although one has featured here in the past, Moorstown Castle, County Tipperary (see In the Round « The Irish Aesthete). Thought to date from the 16th century, Balief Castle is another member of this small group. The building castle rises approximately 35 feet and has an interior diameter of the castle of 15 feet, eight inches with walls some eight feet, four inches thick. As is customary, it has a single entrance, a pointed arch door on the west side. Immediately inside, is the staircase, with an ascent to the top by 50 stone steps, the majority of which are eight inches thick (the final nine being six and a half inches thick), but all floors and other internal divisions have long been lost, leaving one space that climbs to a still intact domed roof. Today Balief Castle stands in the middle of a field, little noticed and little known. 


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A Cabinet of Curiosities


Cabinets of Curiosity have probably always existed, albeit in different forms. In a seminal work on the subject published in 1908, Die Kunst- und Wunderkammern der Spätrenaissance (later translated as Art and Curiosity Cabinets of the Late Renaissance), Viennese art historian Julius von Schlosser argued that Greek and Roman temples acted as proto-cabinets of curiosity, a role then taken on by medieval churches with their valuable holdings of vessels, vestments and reliquaries, often masterpieces of craftsmanship incorporating precious metal and gemstones.
As we now understand the term, cabinets of curiosity were first created in the late 15th and 16th centuries, around the same time that Western European horizons – geographic, religious, scientific, metaphysical – began to expand. New worlds, new ideas: they recast the way in which people thought of themselves and their surroundings. The Renaissance cabinet of curiosities was frequently filled with rare and priceless treasures. But unlike collections held in earlier ages by temples or churches, these ones belonged to individuals. And while they were the forerunners of the modern museum, initially they existed not in the public realm, but in private ownership and were thus accessible only to the privileged few. Because their contents were costly, they were almost exclusively the preserve of princes and members of the aristocracy, representative of that caste’s wealth and power. Cabinets could vary in size from a single piece of furniture – a cabinet – with drawers holding different articles, to a room or even series of rooms specifically designed to display the owner’s collection.






By the mid-16th century, similar collections had begun to appear north of the Alps and to develop into the kunstkammer (room of art), a term apparently first employed by Count Froben Christoph of Zimmern in his historical account Zimmerische Chronik of 1564–66. Alternatively, they might be called Wunderkammer (room of wonder). Whatever the name, they featured a broad range of objects, including Artificialia (products of man) and Naturalia (products of nature), with some pieces being a hybrid combination of both. A cup owned by the Emperor Rudolf II in the early 17th century, for example, was made from an elaborately carved horn of a rhinoceros, on top of which sat a silver-gilt lid in the form of a grimacing monster, a fossilized shark’s tongue coming out of its mouth and a pair of African warthog tusks serving as its horns. Scientific instruments, clocks and automaton might also feature in the typical kunstkammer. Priceless works of art were placed alongside strange items brought from distant lands on one of the newly opened global trade routes, pieces from the distant past were displayed next to the newest objets de vertu. They were united in their diversity, their beauty and their singularity. In many instances, they were small but wondrously formed, a display of the craftsman’s ingenuity, incorporating rare materials such as crystal, ivory and amber, together with gold and silver and gemstones.
Collectors would acquire valuable antiquities, including sculptures, mosaics, cameos, medals and coins. They commissioned paintings from leading artists and sought out bizarre and curious pieces. Isabella d’Este was the proud owner of a unicorn’s horn, while in 17th century Vienna the Emperor Ferdinand III possessed a bowl (or chalice) said to have come from Solomon’s Temple as well as horn which had belonged to the Magi. Other collectors came to own mermaids’ skeletons or taxidermized creatures that were part bird, part beast. Brought together, these diverse items reflected the era’s budding curiosity and insatiable thirst for better comprehension of what was then a rapidly changing world. Collections were simultaneously intended to delight the eye and to encourage closer study of nature in all her forms. In 1565 Samuel Quiccheberg, scientific and artistic adviser to Albrecht V of Bavaria, published Inscriptiones vel tituli theatre amplissimi, the first treatise on collecting in which he described the cabinet of curiosity as being ‘a theatre of the broadest scope, containing authentic materials and precise reproductions of the whole of the universe.’
While some of the largest and most famous Kunstkammern were formed by the likes of the Emperor Rudolf II in Prague Castle or the Archduke Ferdinand II in Schloss Ambras outside Innsbruck, members of the emerging European bourgeoisie also began to form their own collections. In 1599 the Neapolitan apothecary Ferrante Imperato published Dell’Historia Naturale, which included an engraving depicting his own cabinet of curiosities then on display in the city’s Palazzo Gravina. The picture shows the extraordinary objects gathered by Imperato in one room, said to have numbered as many as 35,000 plant, mineral and animal specimens, including shells, marine creatures and even a crocodile suspended from the ceiling.





Great collections continued to be formed over the course of the 17th and 18th centuries, perhaps none greater than belonging to Sir Hans Sloane. Born in 1660 in Killyleagh, County Down, even as a child Sloane collected plants, shells, bird eggs and other objects of natural history which he carefully catalogued. At the age of 19 he left Ireland and moved to London to study chemistry and then medicine. After some years travelling elsewhere in Europe, Sloane spent time in Jamaica and the Caribbean (where he is sometimes credited with inventing milk chocolate). Back in London and married to an heiress, he became a successful physician, appointed President of the College of Physicians in 1719. He also continued collecting, so that by the time of his death at the age of 92 in 1753 he had amassed some 71,000 objects, many of them acquired from other collectors – notably James Petiver and William Charleton – and housed in a property he owned in Chelsea, London (where he is still recalled through the names of such locations as Sloane Square and Hans Crescent). In his will, Sloane bequeathed the entire collection to the nation, on condition of payment of £20,000 to his heirs, and that Parliament create a new and freely accessible public museum to house it. The funds were raised through a national lottery and in June 1753, an Act of Parliament established the British Museum, where much of Sloane’s collection remains to the present day.
Sir Hans Sloane was by no means the only Irish creator of a cabinet of curiosities. Also in the 18th century, Dr Richard Pococke, a Church of Ireland clergyman who in 1756 became Bishop of Ossory, developed his own remarkable collection, perhaps inspired by those he had seen when travelling through Europe as a young man. Writing from Berlin to his mother in October 1736, he described visiting ‘the Chambers of Sciences & Curiosities in the Palace, where are very rich Cabinets & great curiosities, natural & artificial…an Egg with a Crocodiles head just out of it no bigger than a Goose Egg, a trunk of a tree with the horns of a deer run thro it & part of the head let into it, which I believe was done by art, the tree standing & appears plainly to have grown after it being much bigger where the horns run in than in any other part, stones natural mix’d with gold, &c.’ Pococke later travelled to the Middle East and while there acquired objects, including ancient Egyptian mummies, bringing them back to Ireland where they were installed in the Bishop’s Palace in Kilkenny. Visitors to the episcopal residence could see the mummies alongside antique Greek and Roman coins and medals, as well as urns, fossils and shells, and in the garden several basalt stones that Pococke had carried off from the Giant’s Causeway in County Antrim.
Incorporating items collected by Charles Cobbe, Archbishop of Dublin, the cabinet of curiosities at Newbridge, County Dublin was essentially the creation of his son Thomas and daughter-in-law Lady Betty Cobbe who lived there from the time of their marriage in 1755 to their respective deaths in the early 19th century. Originally referred to as ‘ye Ark’, the cabinet filled an entire room in Newbridge, its walls lined with hand-painted sheets depicting oriental scenes and held in place by faux bamboo découpage trellising. A suite of specially made cases and display cabinets were filled with a typically diverse range of items, shells, exotica, curios, much of it from other countries. In 1758, for example, the Cobbes bought some coral, as well as a nest of vipers and a ‘Solar Microscope.’  Eventually, the collection came to include a stuffed crocodile, an ostrich egg mounted in a bog oak stand, a set of ivory chess pieces from China and a depiction of the coronation of George III (1761) carved in bone and placed inside a glass bottle.
Over time, the room in Newbridge began to suffer neglect: even by 1858 it was being described as ‘the poor old museum.’ In the 1960s the paper on the walls was taken down and sold, the cases and cabinets moved first to the basement and then an attic lumber room, and the space converted into a sitting room. More recently, Newbridge’s cabinet of curiosities has been recreated, a replica of the wallpaper produced from memory by a member of the family, Alec Cobbe, the cases brought down from the attic, and a replica sample of the collection once more on display. It offers an opportunity to see how cabinets of curiosity, in all their quirky, whimsical idiosyncrasy, would have looked when they were more widespread.

Kunstkammer: An Idiosyncratic Cabinet of Curiosities runs at Lismore Castle Arts, County Waterford until October 26th 2025. 

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Difficult to Locate without a Guide


In Parnell and His Island, originally published as a series of articles in Le Figaro in 1886, George Moore recalls an early morning duck shooting expedition on Lough Carra, County Mayo. He and his companion set off in the dark across the wind-tossed lake in a water-logged boat, landing before the remains of Castle Carra. Moore describes how, to escape the bitterly cold wind, the two men decide to take shelter in the building. ‘Dacre says he’ll be able to find the way, and after much scratching amid the bushes, and one cruel fall on the rocks, we reach some grass-grown steps and climb through an aperture into what was once probably the great hall. A high gable shows black and massy against the sky, and tall grass and weeds grow about our feet, and farther away the arching has fallen and forms a sort of pathway to the vault beneath. Centuries of ivy are on walls, and their surfaces are broken by wide fissures, vague and undistinguishable in the shadow and cold gloom. But as the moon brightens I see, some fifteen feet above me, a staircase – a secret staircase ascending through the enormous thickness of the walls. What were these strange ways used for? Who were they who trod them centuries ago? Slender women in clinging and trailing garments, bearded chieftains, their iron heels clanging; and as I evoke the past, rich fancies come to me, and the nostalgia of those distant days, strong days that were better and happier than ours, comes upon me swiftly, as a bitter poison pulsing in blood and brain; and regardless of my friend’s counsels, I climb towards the strange stairway, as I would pass backwards out of this fitful and febrile age to one bigger and healthier and simpler…’ 





Sited on a small peninsula on the eastern shores of Lough Carra, the castle here was built by the Anglo-Norman Adam de Staunton in the late 13th century. His descendants remained in possession of the property for the next 300 years, mixing with other local families and hibernising their surname to MacEvilly. In 1574 the castle’s owner was Moyler or Miles M’Evilly, but some time later the building and surrounding lands were acquired by Captain William Bowen, his possession confirmed by deed of feoffment dated November 1591 and made to him by Peter Barnewall, Baron Trimleston. How the latter came to have a claim on the place is unclear.  Following Captain Bowen’s death without an heir in 1594, Carra Castle passed into the ownership of his elder brother Robert Bowen who lived in County Laois. He in turn gave it to his younger son Oliver Bowen, who occupied the castle until the outbreak of the Confederate Wars in 1641 when he fled to Wales, dying there without issue in 1654. After the restoration of Charles II in 1660, Castle Carra was granted to Sir Henry Lynch, third Baronet, a member of the well-known Galway family. His grandson, Sir Henry Lynch (fifth baronet) took up residence in the area, building a new residence close to the old castle which was then abandoned. A series of formal terraces led from this house down to the lakeshore. However, following Sir Henry’s death in 1764, his heir Robert Lynch moved to another property in County Mayo, originally called Moate but then renamed Athavallie near the town of Balla; today this building is a community school. Sir Robert had married Jane Barker, granddaughter and heiress of Tobias Blosse of Little Bolsted, Suffolk and assumed the additional surname of Blosse, the family thereafter being known as Lynch-Blosse. Meanwhile, both the old castle and the more recently constructed house at Carra were abandoned, the latter building being described as ‘almost in ruins’ in a report on the estate prepared by civil engineer and land surveyor Samuel Nicholson in 1844. 





The core of Castle Carra dates from the time of Adam de Staunton in the late 13th century, although several alterations were subsequently made to the building. Measuring some 45 by 25 feet internally, and of three storeys with its entrance on the first floor of the south side, the roofless castle is an example of the mediaeval chamber-tower which typically comprised a rectangular block with large open spaces on the first-floor level. Later additions to the site include a plinth, bawn and gateway, these probably dating from the 15th century. Long neglected and in a relatively remote spot, an Irish Tourist Association survey undertaken in the early 1940s describes the castle as ‘difficult to locate without a guide’, and that remains the case to the present day. 


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Anno Domini Millessimo Sexcentessimo Decimoquinto



What survives of the original Castle Archdale, County Fermanagh. This was built in 1615 by John Archdale, originally from Suffolk, who had paid £5, six shillings and 8 pence three years earlier for 1,000 acres of land here. The residence he constructed was T-plan in form with a defensive bawn 15 feet high, measuring 66 feet by 64 feet and with two flankers on its northern corners above a steep rise of ground. In 1641, the castle was captured by Rory Maguire and while its heir, William Archdale, was saved by his nurse, his siblings were all killed. After the property was returned to the family, it was repaired and inhabited again until 1689 when, during the Williamite Wars, the castle was once more attacked and burnt out. Thereafter it was left abandoned. Above the semi-circular entrance gate on the south side is an inscription in Latin – Data Fata Secutus Johannes Archdale Hoc. Edificium Struxit Anno Domini Millessimo Sexcentessimo Decimoquinto – noting that the castle had been built by John Archdale in 1615. A large Palladian house, also called Castle Archdale, was built nearby by the family in the following century, but this was demolished in 1970 and now only the stableyard remains. 



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The Four Penny Castle


Now surrounded by suburban housing, Monkstown Castle, County Cork once stood proud in its own grounds and overlooking the estuary of the river Lee and access to Cork harbour. The building dates back to the 17th century when it was constructed c.1636 by one Anastasia Gould, wife of John Archdeacon, said to have been a naval officer who was overseas supporting the King of Spain. Legend has it that when he returned home and saw this large structure on his land, he immediately assumed it had been erected by his enemies, and accordingly fired on it, one cannon ball hitting the battlements. The other story associated with Monkstown Castle is that Anastasia Gould was determined not to waste money on its construction and so employed the workmen at a fixed rate with the stipulation that they purchase their daily food supplies and so forth from her at a moderate price. When the job was finished, all bills paid and all sums collected, she found that the castle had cost her precisely four pence. 




Like many similar properties in Ireland, Monkstown Castle has experienced mixed fortunes over the centuries. The Archdeacons do not appear to have enjoyed possession of the building for very long as in the aftermath of the Confederate Wars and the arrival of the Cromwell’s New Model Army, both castle and surrounding estate were granted to Colonel Hercules Huncks, remembered today for having refused to sign Charles I’s execution order (and accordingly being described by Oliver Cromwell as a ‘froward, peevish fellow’). Huncks sold the property to Michael Boyle, Dean of Cloyne (and future Archbishop of Armagh) but in the aftermath of the Restoration the Archdeacons were living there once more, perhaps as tenants of Boyle. In any case, owing to their allegiance to the Stuart cause, they lost the castle again in the aftermath of the Williamite Wars and in due course it was inherited by two of his granddaughters who had married into the Vesey and Pakenham families; thus portions of the estate came to be owned by both the Earl of Longford and the Viscount de Vesci. How well the castle stood is open to question. In 1700 during his Visitation to the diocese Dive Downes, Bishop of Cork and Ross wrote that ‘Mr. O’Callaghan, a Protestant, lives in Monkstown, in a good square castle with flankers. However, at some point in the 18th century it was rented to the government to serve as an army barracks and in his Ancient and Present State of the County and City of Cork first published in 1750, Charles Smith says the castle ‘is large and in ruins, and is flanked by 4 square turrets.’ On the other hand, the Dublin Penny Journal of August 1833, although judging it a ‘large and gloomy pile of building’, comments that the castle is ‘in good repair.’ 




By the early 19th century, Monkstown Castle was owned by the Veseys but leased to one Bernard Shaw, Collector of Cork Port and a member of the same family as the future dramatist George Bernard Shaw. A large chimneypiece inside the building carries the initials B.S. and the date 1804 (as well as 1636) , indicating work was undertaken here at that time, undertaken by local architect William Deane. Bernard Shaw was duly succeeded by his son, Bernard Robert Shaw who lived here until 1869 when he and his wife moved to England where they died. Whether the castle was still occupied is open to question as around 1840 the Shaws had built a large residence close by, called. Castle House. In June 1871 the estate of Bernard Robert Shaw running to 905 acres was advertised for sale. At the start of the last century, the castle was used by the local badminton club before being acquired in 1908 by the newly-established Monkstown Golf Club, which then made the building its club house. MGC bought the castle and what was then a nine-hole course from the De Vesci estate in 1959 for £4,000, selling the castle and some 32 acres in 1967 for £22,000. Thereafter, while the surrounding land was divided up into plots for housing, the castle remained empty and falling into disrepair, becoming a roofless shell. Between 2008 and 2010 extensive restoration work was carried out on the property, which had permission to be divided into three apartments. However, while re-roofed and made watertight, the building was then left unfinished and has remained in this state ever since. In recent years, it has been on the market for €800,000. Not a huge sum, but somewhat more than the four pence the castle originally cost Anastasia Gould. 


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A Fair Stone Howse


Thought to have been born in Paisley, Scotland around 1577, Sir George Hamilton was a younger son of Claud Hamilton, first Lord Paisley. Following the accession of James VI to the English throne (as James I) in 1603, and the Flight of the Earls from Ulster four years later, Sir George and his older siblings were granted lands in that part of Ireland. By 1611, having received some 12,400 statute acres, he had moved to this country where he and was living with his family in the Strabane area of County Tyrone part of which, lying to the east of a 15th century former O’Neill tower house on Island MacHugh in Lough Catherine, was called Derrywoone. Unlike many of his fellow Scots Sir George was a staunch Roman Catholic, described in 1622 as “an arch-papist and a great patron of them.’ Following the death of his first wife Isobel Leslie, in 1630 Hamilton married Lady Mary Butler, a daughter of the 11th Earl of Ormond. When her father had difficulty paying the agreed dowry of £1,800, he granted his new son-in-law the manor, castle, town, and lands of Roscrea, County Tipperary for 21 years (for more on the castle, see A Dominant Presence « The Irish Aesthete). In 1646, during the Confederate Wars, Roscrea was attacked and captured by Owen Roe O’Neill, but it is unclear whether Hamilton was still alive at this date or had already died. In part the confusion arises because one of his nephews, likewise Sir George Hamilton and likewise married to another Lady Mary Butler, then lived not far away in Nenagh, County Tipperary. The latter Sir George, incidentally, was father of Anthony Hamilton, author of the famous Mémoires du Comte de Grammont, first published in 1713. 





Now deep in woodland but presumably once with clear views over Lough Catherine to the immediate west, Derrywoone Castle is believed to have been built for Sir George Hamilton around 1619; work there was almost complete three years later when it was recorded as being a  ‘fair stone howse, 4 stories high, which is almost finished, and a bawne of stone and lyme, 90 foot long, 70 foot broad and 14 foot high. The house takes up almost the full bawne. As soon as it is finished, he [Hamilton] intends to dwell there himself.’ The same report suggests that in excess of 80 families may have been settled in the vicinity of the castle, although an archaeological survey in 2013 revealed no evidence of houses here. More a fortified house than a castle, Derrywoone was designed as an L-shaped residence with large window openings on all sides and a fine gable end to the south. Stylistically, the castle reveals the Hamiltons’ Lowland-Scottish origins, not least thanks to a  finely carved corbelled out-staircase on the south-west side; a large round tower also survives on the north-east. 





Little information about the later history of Derrywoone seems to be available. Since Sir George moved to Roscrea following his second marriage and seems to have been based there, the castle may have stood empty or occupied by whoever was responsible for managing his property in this part of the country. He had one surviving son, James, who died unmarried in 1659. In the Down Survey for Tyrone, James Hamilton is described as ‘James Hamilton of Roskre Esqr. a minor Sone to Sr George Hamillton ye elder of Roskrea knight deceased who was a Scottish papist.’ Indeed, many of the Hamiltons, not just James’s cousin Anthony, remained both Roman Catholic and loyal to the Stuarts, going into exile in France and elsewhere in the late 17th century. However, eventually one of the family, James Hamilton, sixth Earl of Abercorn and a great-nephew of Sir George, conformed to the Established Church and inherited the Ulster estates. His descendants have lived there ever since, in the 18th century moving to a new residence. Located to the south of Derrywoone, it is called Baronscourt. 


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How the Mighty have Fallen


‘Sir Lucas Dillon, father of the first Earl of Roscommon, and son of Sir Robert Dillon, who was Attorney-General to Henry VIII, built the castle and church of Moymett, after having received the grants of the Abbey of the Virgin Mary at Trim, and the townlands of Ladyrath, Grange of Trim, Cannonstown and Rathnally, in the year 1567.’
From ‘A Continuation of Notes on Sepia Sketches of Various Antiquities presented to the Library of the Royal Irish Academy’ by George V Du Noyer, in Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol. VII, 1862.





The tomb of Sir Lucas Dillon (c.1530-1593) and his first wife Jane Bathe in Newtown Trim, County Meath has featured here before (see Former Greatness « The Irish Aesthete). As mentioned above, he was the eldest son of Sir Robert Dillon, and member of a Norman family which had settled in Ireland in the 12th century and thereafter prospered. A Chief Justice of the Irish Common Pleas, Sir Robert, despite being Roman Catholic, assisted in the English crown in the dissolution of monasteries in Ireland and in 1537 was granted a 21-year lease of the demesne of St Peter’s at in Newtown Trim and three years later was allowed to buy the property (in 1546 he also purchased the Carmelite monastery at Athcarne, Co. Meath). Like his father, Lucas Dillon became a lawyer and in 1565 was appointed Solicitor General for Ireland. He would later become Attorney General, a member of the Irish Parliament, Chief Baron of the Exchequer (succeeding his late father-in-law), and then a member of the Irish Privy Council. During this period, he acquired the land at Moymet, some four miles north-west of Newtown Trim which he also owned. Again like his father, he acted in the service of the English government: in Terry Clavin’s entry in the Dictionary of Irish Biography, he notes that Dillon ‘believed that the best means of pacifying Ireland was by the extension of the common law to all corners of the island.’ He was especially close to Sir Henry Sidney, Lord Deputy of Ireland 1565-71 and again 1575-78 and accompanied the latter on his tours of Ireland; Sidney knighted Dillon in 1575. Inevitably as he grew older, the number of Dillon’s enemies increased – he often faced charges of corruption – but he managed to hold on to his offices until he died in 1593. His eldest son James would become first Earl of Roscommon, despite remaining Roman Catholic, although (although subsequent generations conformed to the Established Church).





In their guide to North Leinster, Professors Casey and Rowan described the buildings at Moymet as ‘a rare microcosm of late medieval life in Ireland.’ The ensemble begins with a substantial three-storey gatehouse, comprising an entrance archway, once vaulted, with a number of rooms above. On the west side, a narrow vaulted chamber has a spiral staircase in one corner giving access to the upper level. A short distance south of this lie the remains of the castle which would have served as the Dillons’ residence. Although now in poor condition, this was originally of four storeys, presumably with a typical vaulted chamber on the ground floor (none of the interior divisions survive). Several large window and chimney openings survive, as well as a garderobe in the south-east corner of the structure. There is also, seemingly a much-worn sheela-na-gig figure on the east wall, but the presence of an excessively inquisitive herd of cattle prevented the Irish Aesthete from seeing this. A long, low range to the immediate west probably acted as a service block. Meanwhile, further west of the castle stands a similarly ruined church, once dedicated to St Brigid. Like the other buildings on this site, it is thought to have been built, or perhaps rebuilt by Sir Luke Dillon since the church is in two parts, the nave wider than the chancel and lit by slender windows with trefoils carved into the spandrels, each then capped with hood moulding.  An internal staircase in the north-east corner of the nave formerly gave access to the rood-loft, where most likely a priest lived. At the east end, the chancel closes in a large rectangular window divided into three with ogee arches and, once more, a hood moulding over the whole. The church appears to have been damaged during the Confederate Wars of the 1640s and then abandoned, as were the nearby castle and its associated structures, leaving the whole to fall into decay.


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The Fate of Carrigafoyle Castle


‘Carrick and Carrig are the names of nearly seventy townlands, villages and towns, and form the beginning of about 555 others; craig and creag are represented by the various forms Crag, Craig, Creg, &c., and these constitute or begin about 250 names; they mean primarily a rock, but they are sometimes applied to rocky island.
Carrigafoyle, an island in the Shannon, near Ballylongford, Kerry, with the remains of Carrigafoyle castle near the shore, the chief seat of the O’Conors Kerry, is called in the annals, Carraig-an-phoill, the rock of the hole; and it took its name from a deep hole in the river immediately under the castle.’
From The Origin and History of Irish Names of Places by P.W. Joyce (1869)





‘Sir William Pelham and the earl of Ormond set out early this year [1580] on a fresh campaign in Desmond’s territory; the first marching first to Limerick in the beginning of February, and the latter to Cork, and both forming a junction at the foot of Slieve Mis, near Tralee. They spared neither age nor sex in their march, and, owing to the state of desolation to which the country had been reduced, suffered not a little inconvenience themselves for want of provisions. They then marched northwards to destroy the castles still garrisoned by Desmond’s men, and first laid siege to the strong castle of Carrigafoyle (Carrig-an-phuill) situated in an islet in the Shannon, on the coast of Kerry. The Four Masters say that Pelham landed some heavy ordnance from Sir William Winter’s fleet, which arrived on the Irish coast about this time, and battered a portion of the castle, crushing some of the warders beneath the ruins; but other annalists make no mention of cannon landed from the ships.’
From The History of Ireland, Ancient and Modern by Martin Haverty (1867)





‘For the rebels it was a losing game all through. Pelham and Ormond took Desmond’s strongholds one by one. Carrigafoyle Castle on the south shore of the Shannon was his strongest fortress. It was valiantly defended by fifty Irishmen and nineteen Spaniards, commanded by Count Julio an Italian engineer: but after being by cannon until a breach was made, it was taken by storm about the 27th March. Without delay the whole garrison, including Julio with six Spaniards and some women, were hanged or put to the sword…A few days after the capture of this fortress the garrisons of some others of Desmond’s castles, including Askeaton, abandoned them, terrified by the fate of Carrigafoyle.’
From A Short History of Ireland, from the Earliest Times to 1608 by P.W. Joyce (1893)


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