Tag Archives: Ruins

A Short and Bloody Existence

‘One summer night, when there was peace, a score of Puritan troopers, under the pious Sir Frederick Hamilton, broke through the door of the Abbey of White Friars at Sligo. As the door fell with a crash they saw a little knot of friars gathered about the altar, their white habits glimmering in the steady light of the holy candles. All the monks were kneeling except the abbot, who stood upon the altar steps with a great brass crucifix in his hand. “Shoot them!” cried Sir Frederick Hamilton, but nobody stirred, for all were new converts, and feared the candles and the crucifix. For a little while all were silent, and then five troopers, who were the bodyguard of Sir Frederick Hamilton, lifted their muskets, and shot down five of the friars.’
From The Curse of the Fires and of the Shadows (1897) by W.B. Yeats.





Sir Frederick Hamilton was born in Scotland in the late 16th century, youngest surviving son of Claud Hamilton, first Lord Paisley. As youngest son, he was obliged to make his own way and, like so many of his fellow countrymen, saw opportunities in Ireland. Here in 1620 he married Sidney Vaughan whose father, Sir John Vaughan, was a member of the Privy Council for Ireland and Governor of Londonderry (responsible for commanding the garrison and fortifications of Derry, and of nearby Culmore Fort). Two years later he received a grant of land in County Leitrim, he and his wife gradually building up a holding of some 18,000 acres, much of which had been seized from the O’Rourke family, against whom thereafter he remained almost constantly at war. At the centre of his land, he established a town next to an existing settlement called Clooneen (from the Irish Cluainín Uí Ruairc, meaning O’Rourke’s small meadow). This was given the name Manorhamilton and here in 1634 he built a large fortified house. Come the outbreak of the Confederate Wars in the 1640s Hamilton, who during the previous decade had spent time in the Swedish army, once more found himself under attack from the O’Rourkes. In July 1642, in retaliation for their latest assault, he sacked Sligo and burnt much of the town, including the abbey (an event described above by W.B. Yeats). In 1643, after Manorhamilton was unsuccessfully attacked again, he hanged 58 of his opponents from a scaffold erected outside the castle. Ultimately in 1647 he was forced to return to Scotland, having lost hold of the land he had taken in Ireland. He died soon afterwards in Edinburgh.





Manorhamilton Castle, County Leitrim is one of six late 16th/early 17th century fortified houses considered as a group by Maurice Craig (in The Architecture of Ireland, 1982). The others are Rathfarnham Castle (A Whiter Shade of Pale, August 26th 2013), Kanturk Castle (An Abandoned Project, December 7th 2015), Portumna Castle (Jacobean Sophistication, August 2nd 2017), Raphoe Palace (From Bishops to Bullocks, July 24th 2017) and Burncourt (Burnt Out, July 4th 2016). All six display an awareness of Renaissance architecture while displaying defensive features such as a flanking tower at each corner. Manorhamilton Castle is the least well-preserved of these properties, and it had one of the shortest lifespans. As mentioned, it was built by Frederick Hamilton in 1634, soon after his return from fighting in Germany with the Swedish army of Gustavus Adolphus (one of Hamilton’s sons was named Gustavus and he would later become first Viscount Boyne). Five years after Hamilton had retired to Scotland and died, his mansion at Manorhamilton was attacked and burnt by the army of Ulick Burke, fifth Earl of Clanricarde, Roman Catholic leader of the Royalist army in Ireland. Badly damaged, Manorhamilton Castle never recovered and soon fell into ruin.

The Big Castle


What survives of Castlemore, County Cork. Standing on a limestone outcrop, this once-substantial building (caisleán mór: big castle) is believed to have been constructed in the 15th century by the McCarthys, then the dominant family in this part of the world. Towards the end of the 16th century it was held for them by the MacSwineys but then passed into the hands of the Ryes whose main seat, Rye Court, lay just a few miles away (see June 1921 II, January 26th 2019). It was subsequently owned, and occupied, by the Travers family but must have been abandoned by them because photographs of the castle taken by Robert French in the late 19th/early 20th show it as a ruin. Still, at least then it was relatively clear of vegetation and also of other properties. Today Castlemore lies in the middle of a quarry and is in very poor condition.

Relics of Auld Decency



The remains of Tober House, County Wicklow. The building is believed to date from c.1720 when constructed for a branch of the Powell family (not Power, as is often stated) It appears the house originally rose two storeys over basement but an additional floor was later added above the moulded string course. It’s curious to note that the windows on the ground floor are not symmetrically spaced: one of them on the ground floor being much closer to the entrance than the other. Parts of the slate cladding on the south wall survive, as does the handsome limestone lugged doorcase. Tober is said to have been gutted by fire at the end of the 18th century, perhaps during the time of the 1798 Rebellion when this part of the country was engulfed by violence. It has stood a ruin ever since.



Taking a Defensive Position


Charles Fort outside Kinsale, County Cork has been discussed here before (see On the Defensive, May 29th 2017). Built between 1678-83 it stands on land to the south-east of the harbor. Directly across on a promontory to the south-west is an earlier fortification known as James Fort. Both structures were named after British monarchs, Charles Fort deriving its title from Charles II, James Fort from his grandfather James I. He had succeeded to the English throne in 1603, just over a year after the combined Irish and Spanish forces had been defeated at Kinsale by Charles Blount, Lord Mountjoy. The vulnerability of Ireland’s southern coastline to invasion led the crown authorities to initiate the construction of a fortress from which any approaching ships could be seen and the occupants of which could provide a defence of Kinsale Harbour.




Work began on the construction of James Fort even while James I predecessor, Elizabeth I, was still alive. Its advantageous position meant there had already been an earlier fortification on the site; known as Castle Ny-Parke this had been occupied for a time during the Siege of Kinsale by Spanish troops before they were displaced by Sir Richard Smyth, a brother-in-law of Richard Boyle, the future Earl of Cork. But there was a concern that the Spaniards could return, and in greater numbers, hence the decision to build anew. The fortress’s design came from a military engineer Paul Ive who in 1589 had published a treatise The Practise of Fortification. A few years later Ive was praised by Walter Raleigh for his ‘judgement, invention and industry’ so it is understandable he was given the commission of overseeing the construction of James Fort which cost £675. This is four-sided fortress at the centre of a pentagonal bastion; inside the fort’s walls are various other structures to provide accommodation for troops and so forth. The remains of a hexagonal blockhouse lies close to the water’s edge.




Developments in fortification design, especially the construction of increasingly sophisticated star-shaped bastions following the example of those created by the French Comte de Vauban, meant Ive’s work at James Fort quickly came to look old-fashioned. Hence the decision to build the larger and more modern Charles Fort on the other side of the harbour entrance. Before then James Fort had seen some action in the 1640s during the Confederate Wars but it suffered greater damage in the Williamite Wars towards the end of the 17th century when a gunpowder store exploded. Thereafter the building went into steady decline and by the 19th century was already described as being a ruin: it has remained in this condition to the present day.

All Things Human Hang by a Slender Thread


From History of the Irish Hierarchy by Rev. Thomas Walsh (1864):
‘Athassel, in the Barony of Clanwilliam, and on the west side of the river Suir. William Fitz Adelm de Burgo founded this abbey under the evocation of St. Edmund, king and confessor, for canons regular of St. Augustine.
A.D. 1204, the founder was interred here.
A.D. 1309, the prior was sued by Leopold de Mareys and Company, merchants of Lucca, for the sum of five hundred marcs, £2,500 sterling.
A.D. 1319, the town of Athassel was maliciously burned by the Lord John Fitz Thomas.
A.D. 1326, Richard, the Red Earl of Ulster, was interred here.
A.D. 1326, Bryan O’Brien burned Athassel to the ground.
A.D. 1482, David was prior.
A.D. 1524, Edmund Butler was prior, and the last who presided over this venerable establishment. Its property in land consisted of 768 acres, besides twenty messuages, and the income of rectories amounting to £111 16s 8d, or twenty-two marcs, which would in American money exceed $550.
All this property was granted forever to Thomas, earl of Ormond, at the yearly rent of £49 3s 9d. Queen Elizabeth confirmed this grant and remitted the reserved rent.
Athassel is one of the most extensive ruins in the kingdom, and scarcely yielded to any in extent and splendor. The whole work was uniform, regular, and finished in a fine limestone.’





From The Official Illustrated Guide to the Great Southern and Western Railway by George S. Measom (1867):
‘The site was chosen with the usual taste and judgement of “monks of old”; although a few shriveled trees are now all that remains of the woods by which it was formerly encompassed, and of which there is abundant evidence. A gentle, fertilizing and productive river still rolls beside its shattered glories; and the ruins afford ample proof of the vast extent, as well as the singular beauty of the structure, when the “Holy Augustinians” kept state within its walls. To their order may be traced the most elaborate and highly wrought of all the ecclesiastical edifices in Ireland; their abbeys in that country “evincing a style of architectural elegance and grandeur but little inferior to their fabrics in England and on the Continent”.’





From The Parliamentary Gazetteer of Ireland (1846):
‘The ruins of the edifice are still extensive, and indicate its former magnitude and splendor. The choir measured 44 feet by 26; the nave, of the same breadth as the choir and supported by lateral aisles, was externally 117 feet in length; the tower was square and lofty; and the cloisters were extensive. A tolerable view of the ruins from the north-west, and exhibiting the dilapidated tower, the roofless nave, the cloisters and a roofless chapel in the south-west corner, is given by Dr. Ledwich in his Antiquaries of Ireland. “We cannot,” says that antiquary, “behold the numerous arches, walls, windows, and heaps of masonry promiscuously mixed in one common ruin, without saying with Ovid: Omnia sunt hominum tenui pendentia filo: Et subito casu, quæ valuere, ruunt.’ [All things human hang by a slender thread: that which seemed to stand strong, suddenly falls into ruin]

Ghost House


I dwell in a lonely house I know
That vanished many a summer ago,
And left no trace but the cellar walls,
And a cellar in which the daylight falls
And the purple-stemmed wild raspberries grow.

O’er ruined fences the grape-vines shield
The woods come back to the mowing field;
The orchard tree has grown one copse
Of new wood and old where the woodpecker chops;
The footpath down to the well is healed.




I dwell with a strangely aching heart
In that vanished abode there far apart
On that disused and forgotten road
That has no dust-bath now for the toad.
Night comes; the black bats tumble and dart;

The whippoorwill is coming to shout
And hush and cluck and flutter about:
I hear him begin far enough away
Full many a time to say his say
Before he arrives to say it out.




It is under the small, dim, summer star.
I know not who these mute folk are
Who share the unlit place with me—
Those stones out under the low-limbed tree
Doubtless bear names that the mosses mar.

They are tireless folk, but slow and sad—
Though two, close-keeping, are lass and lad,—
With none among them that ever sings,
And yet, in view of how many things,
As sweet companions as might be had.


Ghost House by Robert Frost. 
Crossdrum Lower, County Meath – one of the houses featured in The Irish Aesthete: Ruins of Ireland (Cico Books), now available to order from your favourite local bookshop or online from Amazon…

Scattered Remains


Lough Ree has been mentioned here on a couple of occasions (see With Advantageous Views, September 19th 2018 and Well Lodged, October 15th 2018). The second-largest lake over the course of the river Shannon (and the third-largest lake in Ireland) Lough Ree is some 28 kilometres long and borders on three counties: Westmeath, Longford and Roscommon. Across its length can be found many islands of differing sizes: until the 1950s many of these were inhabited by farmers: the last man to live on a Lough Ree island only died in February 2018. Lough Ree appears on the map derived from Ptolomy’s second century Geographia where it is called Rheba, indicating awareness of its existence beyond the shores of Ireland. Most likely Rheda is a corruption of Rí, the Irish word for King, whence derives Lough Ree. However, while this might be designated the Lake of Kings, for a long time it was better known for the monastic settlements that were once widespread on the islands here.




Inchcleraun derives its name from Clothru, according to ancient legend the sister of Queen Mebh of Connacht: the latter is said to have retired to the island where while bathing she was killed, seemingly by her nephew (the story is exceedingly complicated). A monastery was founded here around the year 530 by St Diarmaid: a little church, the oldest on the site, is known as Templedermot. By the eighth century Inchcleraun was home to a number of religious settlements, but over the course of the next 500-odd years these were subject to repeated attack and plunder. Today there are the remains of some seven churches, the largest of which is called Templemurry: according to old lore, any woman entering this building would die within a year.




Running to just over 132 acres, Inchmore is the largest of the islands on Lough Ree and lies inside the borders of County Westmeath. The first religious settlement here is said to have been made in the fifth century by one St Liberius. However, in the second half of the 12th century, a priory of the Canons Regular of St Augustin was established here: it is the remains of this establishment – perhaps with later embellishments – which can be found on the island today. Like all such houses, the Augustinian priory was closed down in the 16th century, in 1567 Inchmore being granted by the crown authorities to Christopher Nugent, Baron Delvin.




Like Inchcleraun, Saints Island lies inside the boundaries of County Longford but is not strictly an island since a narrow causeway connects it to the mainland. A monastery was established here in the mid-sixth century by St Ciarán who would later go on to found a more famous house at Clonmacnoise. In 1089 Saints Island was attacked and plundered by Murkertach O’Brien and a large number of Danes. However around 1244 Sir Henry Dillon caused the settlement of Augustinian canons in a Priory of All Saints to be settled on the site of St Ciarán’s earlier foundation. As with all other such establishments, it was closed down in the 16th century but the main part of the church with its fine east window, clearly subject to alterations 100-odd years earlier, survives as do a few portions of the priory buildings.

June 1921 II




As already mentioned, June 1921 was a particularly bad month for country house burnings in north-west County Cork. One of those then lost was Rye Court, seat of the Tonson Rye family: the Ryes were originally living in Cork city (where one of their number was mayor in 1667 and 1668) but had moved to Ryecourt before the end of the 17th century. There they built a fine house and, at some date in the second half of the 18th century changed their name to Tonson Rye as a result of marriage into another family. Ryecourt looked south over a fine parkland, many trees of which still survive but the building was gutted by fire in 1921 and subsequently demolished (a small house was built inside the adjacent walled garden). Immediately behind the old house stood a courtyard with offices to east and west, and with gates and railings closing its north side: all these survive, albeit in poor condition, as can be seen here.


June 1921 I



During Ireland’s War of Independence, more country houses were burnt in County Cork than in any other part of the country. June 1921 saw a particularly extensive outbreak of arson attacks on such properties in the north-west of the county, one such house being Warren’s Grove. As its name indicates, this belonged to the Warren family whose main residence a few miles away bore the equally imaginative name of Warren’s Court. More is known about the history of the latter than of Warren’s Grove, which seems to date from the early 19th century. In 1837 Samuel Lewis listed the property as belonging to John Borlase Warren, a younger brother of Sir Augustus Warren, third baronet. Following Sir Augustus’ death in 1863 without a direct heir, Warren’s Court – and the baronetcy – was inherited by the now-Sir John Borlase and, following his own death less than eight months later, his eldest son, another Sir Augustus. Accordingly Warren’s Grove became a secondary residence for the family. It was burnt by the IRA in mid-June 1921, along with Warren’s Court (and another Warren property in the same part of the world, Crookstown House). Warren’s Court was subsequently demolished, but the shell of Warren’s Grove still stands, the outbuildings in a courtyard to the rear of the house having been converted of late into holiday accommodation.


Historical Recollections


‘Ferns. A small town in the county of Wexford, Ireland. The history of this town commences with that of its religious establishments. It is said that in the year 598, an Irish king, named Brandubh, gave to St Maodhog, or as he is sometimes called St. Aedan, the lands of Ferns, where he founded an abbey and was consecrated bishop.’




‘The rising consequence of Ferns was interrupted early in the ninth century, by the incursions of the Danes who plundered and burned the abbey in the years 834, 836, 838, 917 and 928. By the same marauders it was, for the sixth time, consumed by fire A.D. 930; and the town was accidentally destroyed by conflagration in 1165. In the following year the town and abbey were reduced to ashes by the celebrated Dermod Macmurrough, king of Leinster. As some atonement for the crime of burning the ancient monastery of Ferns, he afterwards founded at this place a new abbey for canons regular of the order of St. Augustin, under the invocation of the Virgin Mary, which he richly endowed with lands.’




‘The remains of the abbey still excite great interest by their historical recollections. It was here that king Dermod was secreted and entertained, whilst waiting in the early part of 1169 for the arrival of his British allies; – a period pregnant with the future fortunes of Ireland! The remains of the fabric consist chiefly of two sides of a cloister, or of a narrow chapel, having two rows of tall windows, of the lancet form. The windows and the piers are uniformly of an equal breadth. Adjoining this architectural fragment is a church, the steeple of which is on a very unusual plan. The lower part represents an oblong square of confined proportions, the dimensions being about eleven feet by eight. At the height of twelve or thirteen feet from the ground, the steeple assumes a round form, seven feet in diameter and twenty in height. The whole is constructed of a reddish stone and, withinside, a flight of steps leads to the summit whence is obtained a delightful prospect over an immense extent of landscape.’

From The British cyclopaedia of the arts, sciences, history, geography, literature, natural history, and biography, London, 1838.