Castle - tower house

The National Monuments Service's description

Associated with St. Carthach who founded a monastery here in the sixth century. Present remains consist of two churches (OF016-015001-; OF016-015010-), a graveyard (OF016-015002-), a possible tower house, a monastic enclosure (OF016-015005-) and an unlocated Early Christian cross-slab (OF016-015003-). Depicted as 'Abbey (in Ruins)' on current edition of the OS 6-inch map. The possible tower house (ext. dims. 5.4m N-S x 10.1m E-W; wall T 0.8-1m) with slight base batter has been previously classified as a church is located in the E corner of the Roman Catholic cemetery and is poorly preserved with traces of a barrel vault over the ground floor the springing of which is visible at the E end of the building, no other architectural features are visible. John O'Donovan speculated in the OS Letters that 'the old vault standing near the old Church of Rahan is a part of this castle [Anglo-Norman castle]' (O'Flanagan 1933, vol. 2, 49). A sheela-na-gig (OF016-015006-) was discovered in 1971 in the ruined walls of a possible tower house which may have come out of an excavation for a burial N of and adjacent to the NW angle of the castle (Newman Johnson 1971, 169-70).

Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien.

Date of upload/revision: 28 December 2011

References

Newman Johnson, D. 1971 Sheela-na-gig at Rahan, Co. Offaly. Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland 101, 169-70.

O'Flanagan, Rev. M. (Compiler) 1933 Letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the King's County collected during the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1839. Bray.