Castle - tower house

The National Monuments Service's description

In the SE quadrant of a cashel (CL016-077001-) and within a large field system (CL008-053001-). The cashel (CL016-077001-) is described by Westropp (1901, 13) as ‘an ancient residence of the O'Loughlins, who, probably in the fifteenth century, built a peel tower in its garth preserving the ring-wall as a bawn’. Westropp (ibid.) also notes that the tower house ‘inhabitants seem to have been in constant trouble with the Government’ and several pardons are recorded. The tower house gateway faced SE and was ‘demolished long before 1878, and, indeed, probably before 1839’ and to the S of the gateway ‘heaps of grass-grown masonry, with traces of an ambrey and steps, mark the site of the castle’ (Westropp 1901, 14). According to Cunningham (1980, 47) all that remained of the castle was a ‘narrow lintelled porch still visible in the mound of rubble’. The name Cahercloggaun is translated by Ua Cróinín and Breen (1997, 47) as ‘Cahair a’ chlochain-The Fort of the Stone House’. Very little of the tower house remains except for a mound of stone (9m NE-SW; 7.5m NW-SE) which extends outside the cashel wall with a hollow in the centre which contains mortared masonry and a lintled doorway leading to the base of a stairway. The stairway survives as ten steps which lead towards the cashel wall in the SE and near the base, on either side of the stairs, two narrow windows survive but have been blocked up by rubble (Ua Cróinín and Breen 1997, 47). The tower house has been listed by Fitzpatrick (2009, 302) as one of three late medieval tower houses found in association with a cathair site.

The following items have been uploaded:
CL004-077002-_01.pdf Details from Risteárd Ua Cróinín and Martin Breen, The Castles and Tower-houses of Co. Clare (unpublished report). Uploaded courtesy of R. Ua Cróinín and M. Breen.
CL004-077002-_01.jpg View of tower house site from N.

Compiled by: Mary Tunney and Lynda McCormack

Date of upload: 13 June 2022

References

FitzPatrick, E. 2009 Native enclosed settlement and the problem of the Irish 'ring-fort'. Medieval Archaeology 53, 271–307.

Westropp, T.J 1901 Prehistoric remains in north-western Clare, part I. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 31, 1-17.

Cunningham, G. 1980 Burren journey West. Shannonside Mid-Western Regional Tourism Organisation.

Ua Cróinín, R. and Breen, M. 1997 The castles and tower-houses of Co. Clare, 6 vols. Unpublished report submitted to the National Monuments Service, Department of Culture, Heritage and the Gaeltacht, Dublin.