Castle - tower house

The National Monuments Service's description

Located towards the bottom of a S-facing slope overlooking the W-E Bride River, c. 160m to the S. This is a Fitzgerald castle with references dating with certainty from the Desmond Rebellion of 1579, after which it was granted to Sir Walter Raleigh (O'Connell Redmond 1918, 148-50). It was described as a ruined castle at Knocknamuch and the property of the Earl of Cork in 1641 (Simington 1942, 5).

This is a rectangular tower house (ext. dims. 12.6m N-S; 9.25m E-W) of four floors with a base-batter, cut-stone quoins, a barrel-vaulted loft over the ground floor and a vault over the second-floor chamber.

The entrance, now modified, towards the W end of the S wall, is beneath an external doorway at the loft level (Sherlock 2006, 88). The ground floor doorway leads directly under a murder-hole to the ground floor (int. dims. 8.2m N-S; 5m E-W), which has embrasures in the N, E and W walls. The loft overhead must have been accessed through a trap-door. Mural stairs rise from the S side of the W embrasure to the SW angle where a mural passage leads down through the S wall past the destroyed external doorway to a chamber commanding the murder-hole. From the head of the mural stairs, newel stairs in the SW angle rise to the upper floors.

The first floor has tall rectangular lights in the E, W and S walls, a destroyed fireplace and oven in the E wall, and a garderobe at the SE angle. There are what might be two smoke-holes at the NE angle, and all the embrasures are segmented with wicker-centering. The second floor is entered through a pointed doorway and has tall rectangular windows in each wall, those on the S and W walls being ogee-headed. There is a destroyed fireplace in the E wall, while a garderobe at the SE angle is entered from the E side of the embrasure in the S wall. The third floor is over the upper vault and has tall limestone windows with stepped-heads and dressed ingoings in each wall, where they survive. There is a wall-walk overhead with a look-out over the stairs housing at the SW angle, but the crenelations do not survive.

A retaining wall (Wth 0.5m; int. H 1.3m; max. ext. H 4.2m at S) c. 2-4m from the base of the tower on the S and E sides may be part of an original bawn. There are curved bastion-like features at the NE and SE angles.

O'Connell-Redmond, G. (1918) The castles of north-east Cork and near its borders. JCHAS 24, 1-6, 62-6, 93-103, 145-51.
O'Flanagan, M. (Compiler) (1929) Letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the county of Waterford collected during the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1841. Typescript. Bray.
Sherlock, R. (2006) Cross-cultural occurrences of mutations in tower house architecture: evidence for cultural homogeneity in late medieval Irealnd? JIA, vol. 15, 73-91.
Simington, R. C. (ed.) (1942) The Civil Survey AD 1654-1656, vi, the County of Waterford. Irish Manuscripts Commission. Dublin.

The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Waterford' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1999). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research.

Revised by: Michael Moore

Date of upload: 26 July 2011

References

O'Flanagan, Rev. M. (Compiler) 1929 Letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the county of Waterford collected during the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1841. Bray.

Sherlock, R. 2006 Cross-cultural occurrences of mutations in tower house architecture: evidence for cultural homogeneity in late medieval Irealnd? JIA, vol. 15, 73-91.

Simington, R.C. (ed.) 1942 The Civil survey, AD 1654-1656. Vol VI: county of Waterford. Dublin. Irish Manuscripts Commission.