Castle - tower house

The National Monuments Service's description

On a wide low flat-topped eminence with views in all directions, with the medieval church (KK023-072001-) and graveyard (KK023-072002-) across the modern road immediately to the S. A castle of a branch of the Fitzgerald family, styled Barons of Burnchurch in the former county palatinate of Kilkenny. In 1654 the last Baron of Burnchurch, Richard Fitzgerald, was transplanted to Connaught and his possessions granted to Colonel William Warden (Commins 1906, 266). It is claimed that Oliver Cromwell probably stayed in the tower house following the siege of Kilkenny, in March 1650, when his army camped at Burnchurch (ibid.). Austin Cooper visited the castle in the 1780s and recorded that it seemed ‘as if but lately inhabited’ and that there was a deep well within the precincts (Price 1942, 30). The tower house was inhabited until the early 19th century, the last resident being the Reverend William Swift who died in 1817 (ibid.). A late 15th/early 16th-century rectangular four-storey tower house (National Monument No. 321) protected by a bawn (KK023-071003-), of which only a circular angle tower survives above ground 20m to the N. An early 19th-century print shows the remains of a bawn wall running between the two towers (Carrigan 1905, vol. 3, opposite 378). The tower house (dims. 10.9m N-s; 9.5m E-W externally at base) is constructed of roughly coursed limestone rubble with well-cut quoins and has a base-batter (H 2.5m; Wth 0.35m). The garderobe chute exits at the S end of the W wall 1.05m above external ground level. The tower house was entered at ground level towards the W end of the N wall, through a pointed head with an external rebate and iron fittings for a yett. The entrance lobby has a murder-hole overhead and a doorway to the left leads to a second lobby. From this a doorway gives access to the ground floor and a straight stair rises eastwards in the thickness of the wall. The ground floor has loops to E and W and a high-level small secondary rectangular window to S. The first floor is entered at the NE corner and the lobby on the stairs has a murder-hole over it. Its floor was laid on joists set into the E and W walls. The oak joist against the S wall survives. There are narrow windows in embrasures to E, S and W and a door leading to a small chamber in the N wall. Another doorway in the NW corner gave access to another small chamber, now filled with masonry, with corner loop and murder-hole over entrance lobby. The stair continues up the E wall with an entrance to the second floor being soon after the corner. It had a timber floor held on corbels and a window to W and a large secondary three-light window to W. A door in S wall gave access to a garderobe and there is an original fireplace, with joggled voussoirs held on corbels, at N end of W wall. A doorway in the N wall gave access to a long narrow chamber with angle loop to NE. A stair rises from a window embrasure at the S end of the E wall and turns the corner to the S wall to give access to the third floor, an intersol beneath the vault, with no windows. The main stair continues up the E wall to the SE angle to give access to the fourth floor, the main room of the tower house above the vault. This room has two-light windows to S and E and single-light windows to N and W. At the N end of the W wall there is a large fireplace with joggled voussoirs. Entered westwards off the S embrasure is a garderobe. Beneath the passage to the garderobe is a secret chamber. Towards the S end of the E wall a stair leads down to a small intramural chamber at third-floor level. At the NE angle a spiral stair leads up to the parapets. At its start a stair leads down to another intramural chamber at third-floor level in the N wall, with windows to N and W. The spiral stairs leads to a doorway leading S on the E wall-walk. At roof level the N and S walls were continued upwards to form mural chambers, between which the roof ran. That to the S has a passage within it giving access between the E and W wall-walks and a doorway leading N into a gallery above this end of the main room. That to the N has a long narrow chamber entered off the spiral stairs. The W wall-walk is partly blocked by a cylindrical chimney. The wall-walks above the mural chambers, with parapets all around, are accessed by projecting steps running above, and parallel with, the E roofline. The external parapets have stepped crenellations and a series of rectangular holes below the level of the base of the crenels. These may be either for scaffolding or for a defensive timber hoard. The roof-line of a later attached two-storey building can be seen in the exterior of the N wall of the tower house. A doorway was broken through the N wall of the tower house at first-floor level to give access to the upper storey of this house, the timber floor of which partly rested on an inserted corbel projecting from the tower house.
(National Monument no. 321)

Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

Date of revised upload: 17 August 2016

References

Commins, J. 1906 Notes on the places of antiquarian interest visited by the society, May, 1906. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 36, 265-75.

Price, L. (ed.) 1942 An eighteenth-century antiquary: the sketches, notes and Diaries of Austin Cooper, 1759-1880. Dublin.

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