Bawn

The National Monuments Service's description

Situated on flat pasture with a river immediately to the SE. Described in the Civil Survey (1654-6) as an 'old little castle ye walls onely standing' (Simington 1934, vol. 2, 306). The land at Ballycolliton was divided between several landowners including 'Sr Nicholas White Kt pprietor in fee by purchas from Edmond Kenedy of Ballycollatan long before the Rebellion (as wee are informed)…John Hurly pprietor in fee by purchas from Mortagh O Bryen of Annagh long before the Rebellion (as wee are informed)…Rory Kenedy pprietor in fee by descent from his Ancestors' (ibid.). A small rectangular tower house (ext. dims. 6.3m SW-NE; 4.75m NW-SE; wall T 1.5m) survives three storeys high and may originally have been a storey higher. It is built with roughly coursed limestone rubble with base-batter visible. Nineteenth-century outhouses are attached to the NW, NE and SW faces. A large water tank and bellcote were placed on top of the tower in the nineteenth century. A flat-headed doorway in the centre of the SE wall probably replaced the original doorway and gave access to the ground floor. This is now covered in debris, with a destroyed fireplace in the E angle of the NE wall the only feature visible. The first floor had a wooden ceiling as had the ground floor and measures 2.25m x 3.8m internally with a fireplace in the E angle of the NE wall the flue of which feeds into the ground-floor fireplace flue. Mural stairs in the SE wall give access to a barrel-vaulted second floor via a flat-headed doorway in the S angle. This floor was lit by windows in the NW, SE and NE walls set into large segmental-arched embrasures with wicker centring visible; the windows are now blocked up. There are slop-stones under slit opes along the mural stairs in the SE wall. Windows consist of simple flat, round and ogee-headed single lights. A possible bawn wall/forebuilding (TN009-042002) is attached to the NE angle of the tower. This is probably a seventeenth-century tower house.

Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien.

Date of upload: 22 September 2008