Tag Archives: Ruins

Boldly and Picturesquely Seated



‘Dundrum Castle is usually supposed to have been erected for the Knights Templar by the renowned Sir John de Courcey, and that powerful body possessed it till the abolition of the order in the year 1313. It was afterwards granted to the Prior of Down, who held it, with a small manor adjoining, till the final suppression of religious orders; and the reversion of this house and manor, with the yearly rent of 6l. 13s. 6d. reserved out of it, was granted to Gerald, Earl of Kildare.’
From the Dublin Penny Journal, No.36, Vol.1, March 2 1833.





‘This Castle was granted to the family of Magennis; on their forfeiture, it became the property of the Earl of Ardglass, and afterwards was in the possession of the Lord Viscount Blundell; the ruins are of an irregular multangular ſorm, with a fine round tower, which is about thirty-five feet diameter in the inside.”  Thus far Mr. Archdall. In addition to which, Harris says, “When the Castle was in repair it often proved a good guard to the pass, and as often an offensive neighbour to the English planted in Lecale, according to the hands that possessed it. Anno 1517, the Earl of Kildare, then Lord Deputy, marched into Lecale, and took it by storm; it being garriſoned at that time by the Irish, who had driven out the English ſome time before. It was again possessed and repaired by the Magennises, and re-taken by the Lord Deputy Gray, with seven castles more in Lecale, anno 1538. lt afterwards got into the hands of Phelim McEver Magennis, who was obliged to yield it to the Lord Mountjoy on the 16th of June in the year 1601, It met with another fate during the progress of the war of 1641, when it was demolished by the order of Cromwell, though then garrisoned by Protestants, and has ever since been suffered to run entirely to ruin.’
From The Antiquities of Ireland, Vol.1 by Francis Grose (1791)





‘The old Castle of Dundrum, boldly and picturesquely seated on a high rock covered with verdure, commanded in the ages of warfare the entrance to the harbour — if to the inner Bay, or rather the estuary of the Blackstaff Water, the appellation may be applied. This was considered one of the finest castles erected by the first Anglo-Norman adventurers; and its ivy-mantled ruins contribute materially to the strikingly romantic features of the landscape. These ruins consist of a great circular keep or tower, with detached fragments of towers, and ruins of other outworks, and a barbican. At a little distance southward of the castle are the mouldering remains of a large mansion, partly a fortalice and partly a dwelling-house of the sort in use in the sixteenth century. From these ruins we command a wider sweep of the magnificent scenery described at Newcastle.’
From A Picturesque Handbook to Carlingford Bay by Robert Greer (1846)


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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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Erected for their Posterity



Above the pointed arch doorway with cable moulding at the entrance to a now-roofless church in Naul, County Dublin is a plaque stating that the building had been ‘Erected by Hon. Edward Hussey and his wife Lady Mabel (nee Barnwall) for their posterity in the year of Our Lord God 1710.’ This memorial also features the Hussey coat of arms and motto ‘Cor Immobile’ (Immovable Hearts). The plaque suggests the building dates from the early 18th century but more likely it was reconstructed then as a chantry chapel for the Husseys (whose vault lies within the nave), because the Civil Survey of 1654-6 described it as being ruinous with only ‘the walles of ye parish church’ still standing. In addition, at the east end there remains a fine double ogee-headed window (a second, less ornamented opening can be found on the south wall). At the start of the 19th century, a Church of Ireland church was constructed to the immediate north of this little structure but was then demolished in 1949 due to insufficient numbers attending services there.



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Glimpses into the Past


Barely a mile to the north of Castle Carra, County Mayo (see last Monday, Difficult to Locate without a Guide « The Irish Aesthete) can be another substantial ruin, this time of a religious settlement. Like the castle, Burriscarra Abbey, as it is now popularly known,  is believed to have been established by the Anglo-Norman Adam de Staunton. He granted the land here to the mendicant Carmelite order, founded by St Berthold in 1154. The date given for the establishment of the house at Burriscarra is 1298, just over a quarter century after the first Carmelite friary had been founded in Leighlinbridge, County Carlow. At Burriscarra, the friars did not remain in situ for long. For reasons unknown – perhaps warfare, perhaps devastation caused by the Black Death – by 1383 they had gone, after which the property lay abandoned for some 30 years. 





In 1413, the former Carmelite friary at Burriscarra was given to the Augustinian order which had already established a house elsewhere in the county at Ballinrobe (see Unclear Past, Unclear Future « The Irish Aesthete). The Augustinians appear to have been invited by Edmund and Richard Staunton, descendants of Adam de Staunton. On arrival, the friars found the place in a poor state of repair, these circumstances made worse in 1430 when the buildings were burned, presumably during one of the internecine disputes that bedevilled Ireland throughout the 15th century. In consequence, a Papal indulgence was granted to anyone who visited the church and gave alms for its repair.  After the rebuilding of the friary a dispute arose between the Carmelites and the Augustinians over ownership of the property. However, it appears the Augustinians remained in residence of the friary until, like all other religious houses, it was suppressed in the 16th century. In 1607 the lands of Burriscarra were granted by James I to one John King, who then sold them on to the Bowens, after which, like nearby Castle Carra, they passed into the possession of the Lynch family and eventually being taken into the care of the Office of Public Works. 





Today Burriscarra friary consists of a roofless church with a side aisle on its south-west side and the remains of a two-storey domestic range incorporating a cloister garth to the immediate north. Much of what survives likely dates from the rebuilding of the property in the 15th century, following damage caused by the fire of 1430. Access to the church is through a small round arched window at the west end. At the head of the building, what was once a very substantial east window occupying much of the gable wall was later blocked up and a much smaller opening created. The southern wall had another three large windows and while these remain, all their tracery is lost. Below these, in what would have been the choir, are a sedilia and piscina. The former is demarcated by a trefoil arch concluding on either side with a carved head, one of which has suffered considerable damage. Note also how the decoration of column capitals inside the arch differ from each other and that the ogee-headed window inside the arch is slightly off-centre, as also is the point of the adjacent piscina’s arch. The only window to retain its tracery can be found inside the side aisle, accessed via two large arched openings on the south wall nave. Like nearby Castle Carra and the subsequent 18th century house, what survives of this religious establishment offers us glimpses into the complexities of this country’s history.

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A Peculiar Melancholy Air



As previously mentioned, George Moore’s 1886 series of essays Parnell and his Island describes a duck shoot that brings him and another man to the ruins of Castle Carra, County Mayo. After leaving that building, the pair walk on an come across ‘the ruins of what is almost a modern house; there is a vast courtyard, and in the centre a colossal stone fox, and farther away is the ruin of a great gateway, and on the hill stand colossal foxhounds.’ This was what remained of a residence built probably at the start of the 18th century by Sir Henry Lynch and then abandoned by his son Robert. There was an earlier mention of the same property in 1836 when the Rev. Richard Butler of Trim and his wife Harriet (née Edgeworth) together with Harriet’s sister Maria and step-mother Frances came to stay with George Moore’s grandparents at Moore Hall, located to the south east of Castle Carra. The went to see the latter site which ‘had that peculiar melancholy air of modern decay belonging to houses which have been abandoned within the memory of man, and on passing through it to the grounds beyond, the party were startled at seeing immense busts on pedestals still standing in the long grass, the remains of former decorations. Ben Johnson, Congreve and some other of the later dramatists of Charles II’s time, were here, presenting a strange grotesque appearance, stained and weather-beaten in this wild and remote corner of the world.’ Since the time of the Butlers, and indeed of George Moore, the busts, as well as the colossal stone fox and hounds, have long disappeared, and the remains disintegrated much further, so that it is even more challenging to imagine how this great house and its surroundings once appeared. The best surviving remnants are the two immense stone gateposts, rising some 17 or 18 feet high. The ‘peculiar melancholy air’ observed by Harriet Butler also continues to hang over the place.



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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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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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Some Highly Picturesque Remains



As the year draws to a close, some pictures of what remains of Corickmore, County Tyrone, a religious house founded c.1465 for Franciscans of the Third Order. The establishment had a relatively short life, being granted in 1603 to Sir Henry Piers and thereafter being allowed to fall into ruin. In Samuel Lewis’s Topographical Dictionary of Ireland (1837), we read ‘There are some highly picturesque remains of this abbey, affording an idea of the original extent and elegance of the buildings.’ Such is no longer the case, since only the east wall and window of the church survives in any substance, the rest of the building being reduced to low sections of masonry. The surrounding grounds, heavily overgrown, are filled with gravestones, some of which date back to the 17th century, not long after the site would have been relinquished by the Franciscans.



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