Castle - motte and bailey

The National Monuments Service's description

In undulating pasture at the edge of Tipperary town, formerly on top of a gravel ridge. No visible surface trace. The entire area of this monument has been quarried to same level as gently undulating pasture to E and SE. Sheer face of quarry aligns the NW side. Factory and modern ribbon development of houses along south-eastern roadside (Tipperary-Thurles). Current edition OS 6-inch map shows ''gravel pits' named to SW. Named as 'Moat' on first ed. OS 6-inch map (1840-41). Visited in the 1840s, it is described in the OS Letters (O'Flanagan 1930, vol. 3, 37) as 'a moat of another circular form, having attached to its south west side, and incorporated with it below, a mound of earth, of a form almost quadrangular. The side of the latter which faces the round moat is rectilineal but the opposite portion approaches the round form. The circular moat is only forty two feet [12.4m] in diameter at the top, and is about two hundred paces at the base from the two points where it meets the other mound, this being but a part of its entire circumference. It is almost sixty feet [18m] in height, i.e. measuring along its side from the edge of the upper part to the base'. Flynn (1913, 6-8) describes it as a 'steep mote with the narrow, flat summit; the bailey connected by a dipping ridge with the mote; the deep and serviceable fosse and rampart round the whole earthwork. The bailey is about 25 feet [7.7m] high and 85 feet [25.9m] in diameter where uninjured. The fosse round the mote is 20 feet [6m] wide and the counter-scarp rises from 3 to 15 feet [0.9-4.57m] - the latter where the fosse is cut through the hill-crest, and where the outside ground is nearly level with the summit of the rampart. Where the hill falls away the foss is shallow, but there the outer side of the rampart is steeply formed, apparently by throwing out the excavated clay. On the N. side of the bailey the fosse is 6 feet [1.8m] wide and 3 feet [0.9m] deep. The whole structure is fairly preserved except at the S.W. where excavations for gravel have destroyed the fosse and a small part of the bailey. To the N.E. of the mote, but from 100 to 150 yards [90-140m] away, human bones are said to have been found in quantities. A skeleton was certainly found there some 12 or 14 years ago' and includes a plan and section of the monument. Monument is visible on aerial photograph (CUCAP APA 26 13.7.1966) and Barry (1977, 149) refers to the upstanding motte.

Compiled by: Jean Farrelly

Date of upload: 26 August 2011

References

Flynn, P. 1913 Ancient mounds and earthworks near Tipperary. North Munster Antiquarian Journal 3, no.1, 5-21.

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.

Barry, T.B. 1977 Medieval moated sites of south-eastern Ireland. British Archaeological Reports, British Series 35. Oxford.