Castle - tower house

The National Monuments Service's description

On North Main Street, Youghal. In 1835 a tower house, know as The Magazine and ‘still remembered as Cromwell’s residence' in 1856 (Hayman 1856, 15), was demolished and replaced by a three-storey end-of-terrace building (number 54 North Main Street). It was represented on a wood cut of 1850 as four-storied with a base batter and a crenellated parapet. An archaeological assessment (Noonan 2006b) revealed that 'the north boundary wall to the rear of the property…contains an infilled late medieval fireplace at first-floor level.' Three trenches were archaeologically excavated inside the existing street-fronting building and revealed 'substantial remains of the lower courses of the south and north walls, respectively, of the demolished tower-house.' A fourth trench, opened in the rear-yard, 'uncovered a layer of probable archaeological significance 0.6m beneath the floor level of a demolished 19th-century bakery'. The relationship between the tower house and the section of walling containing the late-medieval fireplace was not established. The late-medieval masonry was preserved in situ. (Zajac et al. 1995, 101-102)

References

Noonan, D. 2006b Archaeological testing and monitoring at 54 North Main St, Youghal, Co. Cork. Licence no. 03E1699. Unpublished report.

Zajac, S., Cronin, J. and Kiely, J. 1995 Urban archaeological survey - county Cork (2 vols.). Unpublished report commissioned by the Office of Public Works, Dublin. Hayman, S. 1856 The ecclesiastical antiquities of Youghal, No. III. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 4, 14-28.