Cloughoughter Castle
| Cloughoughter Castle | ||
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 Cloughoughter Castle |
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| Alternative name (s): | Cloch Locha Uachtair | |
| Creation time : | First quarter of the 13th century | |
| Castle type : | Inselburg | |
| Conservation status: | ruin | |
| Standing position : | Irish nobility | |
| Construction: | Quarry stone | |
| Place: | Killeshandra | |
| Geographical location | 54 ° 1 '7.5 " N , 7 ° 27' 17.3" W | |
| Height: | 45 m ASLTemplate: height / unknown reference | |
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Cloughoughter Castle ( Irish Cloch Locha Uachtair ) is a ruined castle on a small island in Lake Lough Oughter , about four kilometers east of the village of Killeshandra in County Cavan, Ireland .
history
The castle was located in the historical kingdom of Brefni in its eastern part, which is roughly congruent with today's County Cavan. Before the castle was built, this place could have been a crannóg . At the end of the 12th century, the site was in the hands of the O'Rourke family , but it appears that it fell into the hands of the Anglo-Norman William Gorm de Lacy after the Normans seized control of part of this ruling clan had. It is not known exactly when construction of the castle began, but it is believed that it happened in the first quarter of the 13th century. Architectural elements ensure the classification of the lower two floors in this period.
In 1233 the O'Reilly clan took possession of the area and had the castle completed. They kept her for centuries amid the conflicts with Clan O'Rourke and members of their own clan. There '' Philip O'Reilly '' was imprisoned in the 1360s, "with no food other than a roll of oats for day and night and a cup of water so that he had to drink his own urine."
After the plantation
Ownership of Cloughoughter Castle was guaranteed to war veteran Hugh Culme in the Ulster Forced Plantation . Culme unfortunately did not live in the castle, but had a new house built on the nearby lake shore. The castle was further fortified and used as an armory , but not for residential purposes. Culme found it safe enough to live on the nearby lake shore. Unfortunately, he was mistaken because he was later locked up together with a large number of his fellow settlers in his own armory.
In the Irish Rebellion of 1641 , Philip O'Reilly, at that time MP for County Cavan and secret leader of the Irish Revolutionaries, conspired to arrest Hugh Culme and gain control of the castle. In this last phase of its use, the castle served as a prison. Culme and other foreign settlers were imprisoned there for years.
In 1649 Owen Roe O'Neill , the commander of the Ulster Army , died at the castle. O'Reilly kept it as an island fortress for the final years of the rebellion; he owned it for a total of 12 years until it was besieged. Ultimately, Cromwell's British forces defeated the Irish armies, moved the defenses back to the lake, captured the lakeshore and bombed the castle from positions in Innishconnel parish . When the castle finally fell and the Irish were captured in March 1653, it was the last rebel stronghold to fall.
The castle was in ruins and was often a subject for artists in the 18th and 19th centuries. Their appearance was described in the travel literature published in Dublin University Magazine in 1852 :
“It stands on a small island, three hundred feet in diameter, just enough to hold the castle and a small strip of rock around it. The island lies in very deep water; the banks are a mile away, wild and still thickly forested. The castle is a beautiful ruin, round, massive, gray with age, except in the places where it is richly overgrown with Irish ivy. The walls are immensely thick, with loopholes and arched windows, round and overgrown with green. It is different from other Irish castles that are square in plan. ”
Maintenance work on the castle ruins began in 1987.
literature
- Wolfgang Metternich: Castles in Ireland - rulership architecture in the high Middle Ages . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1999 Darmstadt, ISBN 3-534-139216 , pp. 184-186.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Cloughoughter Castle, County Cavan . Ireland's Eye.com. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
- ^ William Curry jun. & Co .: The Dublin University magazine . 1852. Retrieved May 8, 2018.
- ↑ Explore Cavan, Cloughoughter . Oracle Ireland. Archived from the original on February 26, 2011. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved March 19, 2011.
