Ballyhannon Castle

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Ballyhannon Castle
Caisleán at Fhorghais
Ballyhannon (Castlefergus) Castle

Ballyhannon (Castlefergus) Castle

Alternative name (s): Castlefergus Castle
Creation time : around 1490
Castle type : Niederungsburg (Tower House)
Conservation status: restored
Standing position : Irish nobility
Construction: Quarry stone
Place: Quin
Geographical location 52 ° 48 '5.1 "  N , 8 ° 54' 29.9"  W Coordinates: 52 ° 48 '5.1 "  N , 8 ° 54' 29.9"  W.
Height: 9  m ASLTemplate: height / unknown reference
Ballyhannon Castle (Ireland)
Ballyhannon Castle

Ballyhannon Castle is a lowland castle near the village of Quin in County Clare, Ireland . The 15th century castle is completely intact and listed as a National Monument .

Ballyhannon Castle , also known as Castlefergus ( Irish Caisleán an Fhorghais ) , probably because of its proximity to the Fergus River , is a tower house with a floor plan unusual in County Clare. The castle is located in the townland of Castlefergus at Latoon Creek , a tributary of the Fergus. The townlands of Ballyhannan (Irish Béal Átha Sheanáin , "mouth of the ford of the Seanán", north and south , Irish Thuaidh or Theas ) lie northeast of the castle. The older spelling of the name has been preserved there.

Robert Twigge described the castle as follows in the early 1900s:

“The castle stands on a low rock that is sloped to the west and has no external works . (The enclosure described in 1675 had already been removed at that time.) The perfect tower, 33'6 "x 24 ', is in excellent condition as it was inhabited in the last century. The pointed arched door on the south side is opened by a loopholes on the left and a Meurtrière protected from above. The staircase winds upwards in the southwest corner and on the 14th step is a long corridor with two windows on the west side. At the northern end a spiral staircase with 72 steps leads upwards. step above the corridor to reach another passage through the north wall. Five curved steps at the south end of the west corridor leading to a similar passage along the south wall on the porch and Lodge. in the southwest corner of a pretty is trefoil window with two panes and in the southeast corner, a garderobe If you continue to climb the stairs, you will reach further corridors via the lower ones on the west and south sides There are four storage rooms beneath the stone vault that forms the roof. The basement has very deep niches under the corridor and the two on the north side have a narrow, scalloped screen in between. An open fireplace bears the year 1576, but this was of course a later installation in the building. "

history

The Tower House was built around 1490 for Aodh (Hugh) and probably also Síoda , sons of Donnchadh Mac Conmara (Anglis. MacNamara ). This period was described by the well-known antiquarian Thomas Johnson Westrupp as the "golden age of castle building in Thomond" because of the high building standard of the bricklayers at the time. Although Ballyhannon Castle was the home of the MacNamaras for many centuries, there are references in its history to the O'Briens (Ó Briain) on whose land it stood. So granted z. B. Queen Elizabeth I Conor O'Brien (ca. 1534–1581), the Earl of Thomond of Ballyhannon Castle and various other castles that had previously belonged to Donnell O'Brien , in 1560, “this in the family entourage by performance of one Knight's Service ”, which meant that the property would fall to his male heirs, who would be obliged to serve the queen in the army. According to the county's castles for 1570 and 1574, Ballyhannon Castle belonged to Covea Riogh MacNamara , son of Mahon MacNamara . Some transcriptions of these lists indicate that the castle belonged to William Neylon . This is due to an error in the transfer of the columns from the lists of the original manuscript.

An open fireplace with the inscription "HTE 1576" was recorded by Westrupp and Twigge in the castle in the 1890s. This was one of the earliest, dated, open fireplaces in the county, but is no longer found in the castle today. In 1586, Queen Elizabeth I pardoned Hugh , the son of Covea MacNamara of Ballyhannon Castle, who had rebelled. He had to provide guarantees for his future good behavior and answer questions from the local courts. A 1626 contract between Henry O'Brien, 5th Earl of Thomond , and Robert Hawksworth stipulated that the latter would lease Ballyhannon Castle with a piece of land for £ 4. Hawksworth is believed to have been one of the many Protestant settlers from England who brought the O'Briens to the county during this period. The settlement of English Protestants on the land of Irish Catholics born there fueled the rebellion of 1641 and there are many records of Irish robbing the settlers and driving them off their newly acquired land and estates. The MacNamaras of Ballyhannon Castle acted no differently from the other displaced Irish. John Smith of Latoon complained of his losses, "which amounted to £ 1,354, including his Latoon lifetime lease and building and sea-dike expenses." He complained that Oliver Dalahoyde from Fomerla Castle in Tulla “came with 50 people on the night of January 15, 1642 and had stolen some of his goods from him. The work of destruction was then completed by the MacNamaras of Ballyhannon [and others]. ”Most of the Irish landowners who participated in the rebellion were later stripped of their lands. Mahone MacNamara of Ballyhannon Castle was among those who had forfeited their possessions in the rebellion. His property was given to Pierce Creagh - a Protestant settler - and to Barnabas O'Brien, 6th Earl of Thomond . After the rebellion, Oliver Cromwell sought to complete the subjugation of the Irish in his campaign, and many of their castles were razed by the Cromwell forces to rob them of their defensive power. Ballyhannon Castle appears to have escaped this destruction and a sketch of the castle from 1675, recorded in the Edenvale Survey , shows it with its roof and in good condition. At that time, the castle seems to have been surrounded by an enclosure wall with a gate and loopholes . When the Catholic King James II ascended the English throne in 1685, the fortunes of the Irish population improved for a time. Ballyhannon Castle was one of the castles that Sir Daniel O'Brien, 3rd Viscount Clare , deemed suitable as a prison for Protestant settlers who have now been dispossessed. A letter dated 1689 describing what was going on at that time is interesting: “Take each of them who are young men and have the commoners thrown in jail and closely guard the rest, or better still, throw them in a strong castle with a gate that can be locked from the outside, like Ballyhannon. ”Pierce Creagh, who received part of the MacNamaras 'possessions in Ballyhannon after the rebellion, was mentioned in the above-mentioned letter from Sir Daniel O' Brien named as one of those to be arrested. The castle was also mentioned in 1690 when Thomas Hickman , who appears to have lived in fear during another flare-up of conflict, asked Sir Donough O'Brien to retrieve some of his belongings from Ballyhannon Castle and keep his other belongings in a safe place, because he feared that the castle would soon be occupied by a garrison.

The castle appears on Henry Pelham's “Grand Jury” map from 1787 under the names “Ballyhannon” and “Castlefergus”; there the castle is given the last name for the first time. Hely Dutton referred to the castle as "Fergus - inhabited and recently painted white" in 1808. There are some connections with the Blood family as well , but these mainly relate to Castlefergus House which was located west of the castle and is now demolished. Charlotte Blood , daughter of William Blood , who was murdered at his home in Applevale near Corofin , married her cousin Matthew Henry Blood, MD , of Castlefergus in 1831 . Westropp mentioned some strange traces of settlement in the fields of Castlefergus in 1917, probably the remains of a Ráth and other settlements from the early Bronze Age . In 1837 Samuel Lewis called Castlefergus "the beautiful new abode" of "William Smith Blood, Esq. ". He added, "following the remains of an old building," and informed us that the castle was uninhabited at the time, probably for the first time in 350 years. In 1858 the castle was overgrown with ivy and was described as "a beautiful green-clad tower" on the grounds of Castlefergus House .

The American millionaire and oiler Elizabeth Phillips and her husband Henry D. Irwin , who called the castle "Ballyhannan Castle", had the building restored to its former glory in 1970. Today it is rented to wealthy tourists as a remote vacation home. Various American rock and film stars also lived there while filming was taking place in the area.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c R. W. Twigge: Materials for a history of Clann-Cuilein, "Macnamara's country" (the Eastern division of Co. Clare) from the earliest times. Collected by RW Twigge . Royal Irish Academy.
  2. ^ TJ Westropp: Notes on the Lesser Castles or "Peel Towers" of the County Clare . In: Proceedings of the Royal Academy . P. 351. 1899. Retrieved May 15, 2018.
  3. ^ Standish Hayes O'Grady: Catalog of Irish Manuscripts in the British Library . London 1926, Dublin 1992. 'Castle Builders List'. P. 72.
  4. ^ TJ Westropp: Notes on the Lesser Castles or "Peel Towers" of the County Clare . In: Proceedings of the Royal Academy . P. 362. 1899. Retrieved May 15, 2018.
  5. ↑ The Irish Fiants of the Tudor sovereigns (Elizabeth) . De Búrca, Dublin 1994. Elizabeth, no. 288.
  6. ^ Castle Lists in 1570 & 1574 State Papers, Ireland, Elizabeth . Volume XXX, No. 68.1. Chapter: A list of the castles in Co. Clare in 1570 . Published by Martin Breen in the North Munster Antiquarian Journal . 1995, issue XXXVI.
  7. ^ State Papers, Ireland, Elizabeth . Volume XLV, No. 35.1. Chapter: A list of castles in Co. Clare in 1574 . Published by RW Twigge in `` Journal of the North Munster Archaeological Society ''. Book I, No. 2. 1910.
  8. ↑ a b Martin Breen: History . Ballyhannon Castle site. Retrieved June 6, 2012.
  9. ^ TJ Westropp: Notes on the Lesser Castles or "Peel Towers" of the County Clare . In: Proceedings of the Royal Academy . P. 357. 1899. Retrieved May 15, 2018.
  10. ↑ The Irish Fiants of the Tudor sovereigns (Elizabeth) . De Búrca, Dublin 1994. Elizabeth, no. 4860.
  11. ^ Petworth House Archives. MSS C27 / A39. 1626 Rental of Thomond Property .
  12. ↑ James Frost: The History and Topography of the County of Clare . Dublin 1878. p. 370.
  13. ↑ James Frost: The History and Topography of the County of Clare . Dublin 1878. p. 425.
  14. ↑ Creagh also received lands in Dangan in Quin.
  15. ^ Brian Ó Dálaigh, Martin Breen, Ristéard Ua Cróinin: The Edenvale Castle Survey of Co. Clare 1671-79 in Munster Antiquarian Journal . Issue 45 (2005). P. 43.
  16. ^ Philip Dwyer: The Diocese of Killaloe . Dublin 1878. p. 389.
  17. ^ John Ainsworth: The Inchiquin Manuscripts . Dublin 1961. No. 50.
  18. ^ John Ainsworth: The Inchiquin Manuscripts . Dublin 1961. No. 78.
  19. ^ Hely Dutton: A Statistical Survey of the County of Clare . 1808. p. 310.
  20. ^ Hugh WL Weir: Houses of Clare . Whitegate, 1986. p. 66.
  21. ^ The Other Clare . Volume 16, p. 51.
  22. ^ Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland . Booklet XLVII. 1917. p. 15.
  23. ^ Samuel Lewis: A Topographical Dictionary of Ireland . Baltimore 1984 (reprint). Volume I: p. 496. Volume II: p. 478-479.
  24. ↑ Joseph Power (ed.): An Ennis Miscellany . Ennis 1990. p. 131

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