Castle - unclassified

The National Monuments Service's description

In the grounds of Castlecomer House, on elevated ground lying at the confluence of the Dinin River (also known as the river Deen), c. 120m to the W, with a tributary river, the Brokagh, immediately to the S, to the E of Castlecomer. Orpen (1909, 318-19) writes that, ‘From an entry in the Liber Primus of Kilkenny it appears that a castle of some sort was erected here prior to the year 1200, as it is said to have been burned in that year by the O’Brenans’. He goes on to add that, ‘just before the death of the younger William Marshal in 1231, he obtained a grant for forty days of his service due to the king to enable him “to fortify his castle of Cumbre [Castlecomer]”. In 1295, Edward I gave the custody of the castle of Combre to Richard le Erecedekne [Archdeacon], to fight the enemies of the king. The first actual mention I have noted of a [stone] castle here was in 1289’ (ibid.). In 1305 the ‘Castle of Coumbre’ was the location for several of the justiciar’s courts but it appears to have been burnt by William de Bermingham, Lord of Carbury in 1328 (Ó Drisceoil 2018, 49).
Ó Drisceoil (2018, 51) notes that, in 1573 the Lord Deputy John Perot proposed to Lord Burghley that ‘a strong fastness in Kilkenny called Iduffe to be committed to the charge of one whom the Earl of Ormond will trust’. It is possible that this refers to a castle associated with the motte and may be the ‘Castle Comber’ indicated as a tower house on the Down Survey (1655-6) barony map of Fassadining, County Kilkenny (Hibernia Regnum, courtesy of Trinity College Dublin).
The motte is heavily overgrown with trees and there is no visible trace of a stone medieval castle on the top or in the vicinity, though there is a photograph of stone wall-footings which were revealed when the motte was partially excavated in 1938 (Ó Drisceoil 2018, 50, fig. 4). The only upstanding building is an angled structure (KK005-033003-) at the NE end which is probably an outwork of the bastioned fort (KK005-104----) in the town, possibly dating to the early 17th century and this seems to be the ‘Castle (in Ruins)’ indicated on the 1899 revision of the 6-inch OS map (Farrelly, O'Reilly and Loughran 1993, 127; Ó Drisceoil 2018, 74-5).

See attached:
KK005-033001-_01 extract from Down Survey (1655-6) barony map of Fassadining (Hibernia Regnum, courtesy of Trinity College Dublin)

Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

Date of upload: 18 January 2022

References

Ó Drisceoil, C. 2018 Excavation of a seventeenth century bastioned fort at High Street, Castlecomer, Co. Kilkenny. Old Kilkenny Review 70, 45-77.

Carrigan, Rev. W. 1905 (Reprint 1981) The history and antiquities of the diocese of Ossory, 4 vols. Kilkenny. Roberts Books and Wellbrook Press.

Orpen, G.H. 1909 Motes and Norman castles in Ossory. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 39, 313-42.

Farrelly, J., O'Reilly, B., and Loughran, A. 1993 Urban archaeological survey - county Kilkenny (2 vols.). Unpublished report commissioned by the Office of Public Works, Dublin.