Castle - tower house

The National Monuments Service's description

Located on the summit of a hill overlooking a lower road to the W, in undulating hilly terrain in cut meadow. A circular tower house, surviving only up to first-floor level, composed of coursed, roughly cut blocks of sandstone with slight base-batter (H 1.6m high; Wth at base 0.2m). The external face at W has been badly robbed and the exterior of a garderobe chute at NE has been broken away. The main round-headed limestone doorway is at S, externally rebated and chamfered. Only the W jambs, with a yett-hole and drawbar-hole in the wall thickness survive. This doorway led into a lobby with a murder-hole overhead. A doorway to the W, with only one of N jambs surviving, gives access to mural stairs which have a stone-lintelled roof. The ground-floor chamber was probably also accessed from the lobby through an internal doorway which has collapsed. The ground floor has a square internal plan (dims. 5.8m x 4.45m) and is lit by three windows to W, NW and NE. The first floor, accessed from the mural stairs, had a wooden floor and is roofed by a pointed stone vault in good condition. Windows at NW and SW light this floor, the latter has collapsed leaving only the S side of the embrasure and a stone lintel. There has been fairly recent collapse at the SE side of the tower with masonry lying in a heap. According to the OS Letters (c. 1840) the tower survived up to fourth-floor level with a vaulted roof over the first and third floors. There were also twelve 'quadrangular' or flat-headed windows visible though none in perfect condition (O'Flanagan 1930, vol. 1, 186)

The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Tipperary. Vol. 1 - North Tipperary' compiled by Jean Farrelly and Caimin O'Brien (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2002). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research.

Date of upload/revision: 22 September 2008

References

O'Flanagan, Rev. M. (Compiler) 1930 Letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the county of Tipperary collected during the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1840. Bray.