Tag Archives: Ruins

A Pocket Castle



The former gate lodge to Flesk Castle, County Kerry, both now in ruinous condition. Of two storeys over basement, the brick-and rubble rendered lodge takes the form of an octagonal tower with castellated roofline and Tudoresque hood mouldings over the door and windows, the former having quatrefoil-decorated spandrels. It would appear there was only one room per floor, and with no signs of an internal staircase, J.A.K Dean (in his gazeteer of Munster gate lodges) suggests access between different levels must have been via an external staircase. Flesk Castle was designed by and built for owner John Coltsman in the second decade of the 19th century, so presumably he was also responsible for this building.


Still in Use



The first St Johns to come to Ireland were of Anglo-Norman origin and settled here in the 13th century, many of them in what is now County Tipperary. It is, therefore, not surprising to find one of the places in which they established themselves came to be called St Johnstown, or that this now contains the remains of what was once a substantial tower house: St Johnstown Castle. 





St Johnstown Castle dates from some time in the later 15th/early 16th century when many such edifices were being constructed. While the precise year remains unknown, the man responsible for commissioning the building does not, since inserted above the main entrance on the east side of the building is a large carved panel, the centre of which is occupied by a shield divided into quarters: two sets of six scallop shells diagonally face two sets of three fishes. Around the shield, and onto the surrounding wall, raised lettering carries the following inscription ‘Robert De Sero Johe Ons De Cualeagh, Lismoynan, Scadanstown Et  socius Illuis Plebis Fecit.’ (Robert St John, Lord of Cooleagh, Lismoynan, Scadanstown, and a friend of his people had me built). Of rough-hewn limestone from a local quarry, the now-roofless, five-storey tower house is some 60 feet high and measures 35 feet from east to west, and a little over 29 feet from north to south. There are chimney stacks on the north and south sides, and substantial bartizans wrapping around the north-east and south-west corners. While the lower floors have only narrow slits to let in light, more substantial window openings exist on the upper levels





It would appear that at some date during the upheavals of the 17th century the St Johns were displaced from this property, which then passed into other hands; by the second half of the 18th century, it was owned by one Matthew Jacob, whose only daughter and heiress, Anne, in 1782 married the M.P. Richard Pennefather of New Park. St Johnstown Castle was subsequently inherited by one of the couple’s sons, Matthew Pennefather but by 1837 Samuel Lewis could refer to it as being ‘the property of James Millet Esq who has a modern house in its immediate vicinity.’ Millet died in 1850, after which there does not seem to be much information about what happened to the place. But the ‘modern house’ mentioned by Lewis is of interest, since it looks to be a late 18th/early 19th century building with pretensions towards grandeur: lying to the immediate north of the tower house, it is of seven bays and two storeys with one bay, single-storey wings to either side.  Although the site is now accessed via the yard behind the house, originally there was a drive that swept through the parkland to the south and then arrived at the main, east-facing main entrance, with a fine carriage arch leading to the aforementioned yard on one side. While the tower house has long since been abandoned, the same is not the case for the later building, albeit this now rather dilapidated. A fascinating example of a site that, while undergoing alterations, has remained in use since the Middle Ages. 


A Place of Considerable Strength and Importance


‘The ruins of Ballyloughan Castle, situated in the parish of Dunleckny, and Barony of Idrone East, show it to have been a place of considerable strength and importance. Although at present roofless, the walls are in good preservation. It is of a square form, having two towers in the front; from the outer extremity of one of which to that of the other, being a distance of forty feet. The walls, about five feet thick, are in some places fifty feet high; they are of rude stone work, built of the most permanent manner. Fourteen stone steps conduct to the second floor, which rests on an arch. There are two flights of steps higher up, but they are in a state of dilapidation. An apartment about seven feet in height, with two windows, seems to have been in each of the towers: between the towers was the chief entrance, of arched, cut stone. The appearance of the ground adjacent would indicate that the castle was formerly surrounded by a ditch. At a distance of eighteen yards to the west, stands another ruin, about thirty feet square. It has one stone-cased window, with holes for iron bars. The walls are five feet in thickness, and the structure is about twenty feet in height. Another forty yards from the main building, to the north, is another ruin of small dimensions.’
The Dublin Penny Journal, Vol.III, No.136, February 7th 1835





‘Ballyloughan, an old castle, formerly a place of considerable strength and importance, in the parish of Dunleckny, barony of East Idrone, Co. Carlow, Leinster. Though the roof has disappeared, the walls are in good preservation. The castle is square, and has at the front angles two large round towers. The walls are about 5 feet thick, and in some places 50 feet high; and they consist of rude but stable masonry. The second floor rests on an arch, and is reached by a flight of 14 stone steps. The chief entrance was of arched cut stone, midway between the towers; and an apartment was in each of the towers, 7 feet high with two windows. The edifice seems to have been surrounded by a ditch; and in its immediate vicinity are two small strong ruins, one of them about 30 feet square. Ballyloughan-castle formerly belonged to the Kavanaghs; and, at the end of the 16th century, was occupied by Donagh Kavanagh, second son of Murragh Ballagh, styled king of Leinster. It soon afterwards became property of the Bagenal family, and is now in the possession of Henry Bruen, Esq.’
The Parliamentary Gazeteer of Ireland, 1846 (note how the text freely synopsises that published in the Dublin Penny Journal eleven years earlier).





‘Ballyloughan Castle is the remains of a fine baronial residence, in some respects similar to the Desmond castles in Kilmallock, County Limerick, etc… Ballyloughan has the ruins of an oratory and offices, now detached, and well repays a visit. The writer was so fortunate as to interest the late Colonel Bruen, M.P. some years since in the preservation of it, as it stands on his estate.
From Ierne, Or, Anecdotes and Incidents During a Life Chiefly in Ireland. With Notices of People and Places, By a Retired Civil Enginer, 1861

Still Standing



The towering remains of Belgooly Mill, County Cork. A smaller operation was built here in the early 1820s by one Thomas Jennings and served as a starch mill and vinegar distillery. In 1832, a flour miller called Peter Downing constructed g a new six-storey boulting mill, capable of producing 15,000 bags of flour annually, at a cost of £7,000: this is what can be seen here. In 1872, the recently-established South of Ireland and County Cork Distillery Company took a lease on the premises and converted them into a whiskey distillery, but just a decade later this business went into liquidation. The distillery’s copper fittings were all stripped out and the mill left empty, although parts of it were used by the local residents for various community purposes. But during the first decades of the last century, the buildings gradually declined and in 1941 they were stripped of all saleable materials – slates, flooring, beams and the like – and left a shell. The Irish Army was then invited to demolish the six-storey grain store using explosives, but despite several attempts to do so, it remained standing, as it still does today.


In the Summer Time


Summerhill, County Meath has featured here before (see My Name is Ozymandias « The Irish Aesthete)  and is well-known as one of Ireland’s great lost country houses. But its namesake in County Mayo is probably less familiar to readers, although its striking remains are hard to miss when travelling through that part of the island. This second Summerhill was built and occupied by a branch of the Palmer family, which has also featured here (see Lackin’ a Roof « The Irish Aesthete). According to Burke’s Landed Gentry of 1846, ‘This family, long settled in Co Mayo, derives from a common ancestor with the Palmers of Palmerstown and Rush House, and is presumed to have been originally from Kent.’ By the second half of the 18th century, the Palmers owned a number of estates in north Mayo, Summerhill being one of them. 





Summerhill may have been built by Thomas Palmer, who died in 1757, or perhaps by his son, also called Thomas (as were successive generations of this branch of the family), meaning it was likely constructed around the mid-18th century. In 1798 the property was let to one John Bourke who, in August, following the landing nearby of a French force under General Humbert, organised to have the house secured. This proved a wise precaution as a number of other such properties in the area, including Castlereagh, seat of Arthur Knox, and Castle Lacken, owned by Sir John Palmer, were attacked and pillaged by a mob. Bourke’s home found itself under siege by the same band until a French officer based in Killala, Col Armand Charost, despatched a number of his troops, as was later reported, ‘to Summerhill to appease the mob, and another party of men to Castlereagh to save what remained of the provisions and liquors. The appearance of the emissaries ended the siege at Mr. Bourke’s house; but the Castlereagh party, which consisted entirely of natives, could think of no better expedient for preserving the spirits from the thirsty bandits that coveted them than by concealing as much as they could in their own stomachs. The consequence was that they returned to Killala uproariously drunk. As for Castle Lacken, it was completely gutted, and the occupant and his large family were driven out to seek shelter as best they could find it.’ Within a few years of these events, the Palmers were back in residence at Summerhill, and recorded as living there by Samuel Lewis in 1837 and also by Burke in his 1846 guide to landed gentry. However, in the second half of the 19th century, the property was sold to the McCormack family, who remained there until c.1929 when what remained of the estate, running to some 296 acres, was broken up by the Land Commission and the house subsequently abandoned. 





In his 1978 Guide to Irish Country Houses, Mark Bence-Jones noted certain stylistic similarities between Summerhill and Summergrove, County Laois (see A Gem « The Irish Aesthete). Both houses are of five bays and two storeys over raised basement, with the central pedimented breakfront single bay featuring a doorcase reached by a flight of steps and flanked by sidelights below a first-floor Venetian window. Summerhill’s facade has an oculus within the pediment, whereas Summergrove has a Diocletian window, but certainly the two buildings share many features. However, whereas the latter still stands and is in good condition, the latter is now a roofless shell: photographs from just a few decades ago show the majority of slates still in place, but the house is now open to the elements. When Bence-Jones visited, the interiors were still reasonably intact: he included a photograph of ceiling stuccowork, describing it as ‘in a simple and somewhat primitive rococo, complete with the odd rather amateurishly-moulded  bird.’ All now gone, as can be seen, and inside the house nothing left but bits of timber and plaster.  

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.

Sic Transit Gloria Mundi




The scant remains of Lixnaw Court, County Kerry. From the mid-13th to the late 18th century, this was a seat of the FitzMaurices, Barons Kerry. In 1723 the 21st Baron, Thomas FitzMaurice, was created first Earl of Kerry: 30 years earlier, he had married Anne Petty, only daughter of Sir William Petty. The earl was a proud and arrogant man: according to his grandson, the first Earl of Shelburne, he ‘did not want the manners of the country nor the habits of his family to make him a tyrant. He was so by nature. He was the most severe character which can be imagined, obstinate and inflexible…His children did not love him, but dreaded him; his servants the same.’ This provincial plutocrat transformed Lixnaw where, wrote his younger son John FitzMaurice, he spent ‘great sums building and furnishing a very large mansion-house’ along with making many other improvements in the gardens and demesne. However, all his work had started to fall into decay even before the end of the century thanks to the disinterest and extravagance of the third Earl of Kerry. Following the latter’s death in 1818, what remained of the estate was inherited by a cousin, Henry Petty-FitzMaurice, third Marquess of Lansdowne, whose Kerry base was in the south of the county. In consequence, the once splendid house and gardens at Lixnaw were left to moulder, as can be seen in Cornelius Varley’s painting of 1842. Today, a few outer walls survive and, in the surrounding countryside, evidence of the first earl’s great landscaping enterprises, not least a long canal which would once have been a feature of the formal Baroque garden.



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.