Castlemagner – An Abridged History

Castlemagner parish is at the eastern end of the Barony of Duhallow in North Cork. It includes the villages of Castlemagner and Cecilstown and the north east quarter of Kanturk town. In all its 7880 acres, thousand years of careful farming has enriched the naturally fertile soil and there is no wasteland. The troubled history of the nation has ebbed and flowed over its green fields since time immemorial: it was an old and settled place when the Magnels from Pembrokeshire made their way along the Blackwater valley and sank their roots deep into Castlemagner soil to shape the life of the parish for more than 450 years.

Castlemagner Parish is named from a succession of Norman fortifications raised for or by the Magner family who got tenancy of the Gaelic settlement of Muineamhanarrac, in the ancient Tuatha of Monamandrach. The settlement comprised 1,500 acres and stretched southwards from Ardine Hill to the north bank of the Blackwater river – from Ballymaquirk Bridge to Lombardstown Bridge.

William Magner (or Magunel as the name was then given), came into the Muineamhanarrac in February 1183. William was head of a Kindred Settlement sponsored by Philip de Barry, heir to Robert Fitzstephens who had taken the area in 1175/76. de Barry’s mother was a sister of Sir Philip Magunel constable of Pembroke castle: de Barry and William Magunel were possibly first cousins.

Another associated Gaelic settlement, also called Monamandrach, lay northwards from Ardine hill to Ballyhest. This was given to the Knights Templar of the Holy Sepulchre of Jerusalem who built a Preceptory there. Through time and linguistic distortion, the Templar Preceptory  gave name to the old parish and townland of ‘Subultur‘. The Gaelic settlements in these areas are said to have been christianised by St Berehert of Tullylease. The 8th century church (780AD) in Subultur and possibly, a paruchia outreach in Muineamhanearrac, are associated with him in early Christian tradition.

‘The castle is a dreary place’ confided the poet Tom Moore to his diary recording a visit to Castlemagner almost two hundred years ago. And a dreary place it still is, devoid of life and crumbling to decay. Yet for the amateur historian, exploration of the site offers a wonderland of discovery and speculation. The enclosure walls, the solitary Stair Turret and the derelict farm house draw our gaze amid the tangle of briars, the ubiquitous ivy and the debris of a working farmyard. But underneath, in the durable stone, are vestiges of a story of occupation that begins more than 800 years ago with a 13^th Century Stockade.

It may be that the earliest structure on the site was a Gaelic Cashel, but neither trace nor record of it remains. An early Norman stronghold or Stockade may be traced in the kitchen end of the Farm House. Examination of the stonework suggests that the kitchen was developed from a free-standing stable and that the original building was the base of a 13^th Century Stockade. It is not know when or by whom the Stockade was built. Barry ownership from late 12^th Century points to a Barry construction with David FitzWilliam Barry as the likely builder. He flourished around 1200 and built a number of Stockades along his western approaches to oppose heavy McCarthy incursions. These Norman Tours were of fireproof stone and mortar, 20’ x 20’ at the base, 35’ high at the parapet and had arrangement and function similar to the more ancient monastic Round Towers.

How long the Stockade survived is not known. In any event, where the Stair Turret stands today, a Watch Tower was raised in the late 14^th Century. The provision of this new stronghold arose from the measures of Lionel Duke of Clarence for rolling back the McCarthy advance on Mallow. Among other interventions, he provided money for the erection and restoration of fortifications along the original Norman-Gaelic marches. David FitzDavid Barry repaired and strengthened the Lord Barry fortifications and erected several Watch Towers on his lands in Orrery & Kilmore. The new Tower was located at the south west corner of the Stockade which would have been converted to a granary. The Watch Tower was built to a standard 24’ x 24’ at the base and 45’ in height with a retractable ladder to a mailed door in the east wall, 13’ above ground level. Raised by government masons, a neat well-finished appearance is suggested by the south-east cornering which, along with the base of the East wall, remains attached to the later Stair Turret.

The Watch comprised a Captain and 10 guards found by Lord Barry and maintained from Royal funds. The isolated fortification hardly withstood the westward advance of Donagh Óg McDonagh McCarthy in the 1460s nor escaped the fiery incursion of Morragh Na Dótáin O’Brien of Thomond in 1482.

For whatever reason, in the late 15^th Century, Thomas Magner replaced it with a Tower House. Intended as a type of better-class farmhouse, the Tower House was rubble-built of local limestone with incidental cut-stone salvaged from Subulter. The ruins indicate that the base of David Barry’s well-built Watch Tower was extended to 30’ x 30’ with elevations rising 56’ to a protected alure and battlement. The novel 14’ circular Stair Turret, with a shell 3’ thick was, at all levels, built 2½‘ into the East wall of the Keep. An oak stairs, braced and kerfed to the internal shell, rose to the battlement by half-landings at each floor level. The access door opes, which survive, are unmatched and are offset at each floor, apparently for a machicoller over the ground floor entrance. The main entrance was above three cut-stone steps at the North base of the turret. Examination of the Stair Turret reveals that the new building was plastered inside and out and was painted externally, perhaps in grey.

Around his Tower House Thomas levelled and paved an enclosure 110’N-S x 120’E-W and raised enclosure walls 14’high and 4½’ thick with a guarded gateway and a corner turret at the SE corner. The work also featured a chapel and other living quarters. A circular 10” stone badge of Michael the Archangel, emblem of De Barrie of Manorbier, was set over the gateway. It was recovered from rubble in the 1880s. A Síle na nGig stone slab from the Chapel, but originally from the 8^th Century Church in Subulter, was also salvaged. Both were donated to the nearby St Bridget’s Holy Well.

Of Thomas’s structures, only the Stair Turret and the powerful enclosure walls remain but traces of the others appear here and there. His carp ponds are still in the river below and fittings for a water winch are in the East enclosure wall. The pretty little 15^th Century Tower House was an impressive family home through the next three or four generations until the Great Munster Rebellion of 1598 when supporters of the Northern Earls forced the Magners to scatter east through Barrymore and abroad to Scotland, Wales and France.

When Robert Magner and his son William returned in 1600-02 the old Tower House was burned and uninhabitable. William built a new farmhouse in the NE corner of the enclosure. The 2-storey house ran E-W and was built into and over the North enclosure wall. It stood in a new courtyard contained by curtain walls hung between the Stockade and the North and East enclosure walls. Traces of this 16^th Century Elizabethan house remain; pieces of it’s elegant cut-stone palladian-style portico also survive. The ruins in the NE corner of the enclosure, feature remnants of successive developments and styles, offer a treasury of speculation for the exploring historian. They are best viewed from outside the NE corner.

William’s entire estate was lost to the family in the Cromwellian confiscations and a settler named Captain Roger Bretridge took possession of the property in November 1658. Magner’s Elizabethian house was in ruins after the war and the Tower House was uninhabitable. Roger Bretridge set about building a new one. The external walls of his house can be seen running N-S over the East enclosure wall and against the NE corner of the enclosure. They show that the design followed the Cromwellian style with lucid large windows and austere ‘barebones’ finish. The West and South walls were left without windows – probably for privacy and security. The new work was carried out mainly with good-quality stone salvaged from his aborted mansion in Ballyheen. He also converted the old Stockade to a stable for thoroughbred hunters, by hacking out the heavy barrel vaulting, by reducing the side-walls on the inner side and by extending and re-facing the original raked elevations. The 1^st floor seems to have been retained as a grain loft. The house and stable stood in William Magner’s old ‘curtain walls’ courtyard. In 1669 Bretridge got Royal patent to ’The Manor of Bretridge’. He also changed the name of the parish to ’Castle Bretridge’. When he died in 1683 the estate went to his infant grandson Standish Hartstonge of Rockbarton Co. Limerick.

In 1689 the buildings were garrisoned by partisans of Marchal Justin McCarthy Earl Mountcashel. Following the Treaty of Limerick in October 1691, the garrison was attacked by Danish troops guided by Captain Sir John Jephson of Mallow. A 6” cannon, laid from Knockardsharriv, battered the Tower through the morning. Around mid-day the defenders fled. In late afternoon the attackers ventured in and blew up the Tower. Only the Stair Turret and the bases of the South and East walls was left standing. Ostensibly the destruction was to deny the stronghold to any dissident Irish among the 10,000 Jacobite troops then en route from Limerick to Kinsale and France. Practically, it was a fatal strike by the New Order against the Magners, contumacious steadfast henchmen of the Old Nobility.

In 1755, Henry Hartstonge MP was the non-resident owner, with Arthur Bastable as agent, when the 2^nd Earl of Egmont leased ‘The Castle’ and 28 acres of adjoining land to provide over-spill family accommodation for the numerous youthful Persevals holidaymaking in Loghort.  The Earl developed a Georgian-style house on the sturdy 17^th Century Cromwellian ruins. The walls were raised 4½’ under a hipped Georgian roof with enlarged first-floor windows and a 12’ tri-part picture window in the North gable. The chapel and gatehouse were renovated for servant accommodation. He also secured and restored the Stair Turret as a belvedere or viewing platform and laid out the adjacent Castle Field as a lawn with an avenue to a foot bridge over the ancient ford at Ardoyne.

Repairs and modifications were carried out mainly in yellow brick which now, bereft of plaster and paint, looks strikingly intrusive and inappropriate. The Earl extended the old enclosure walls 90’ southwards to quarter a garrison of Horse against the then imminent threat of French invasion. The quarters were later converted to stables and car-houses. Towards the end of the 18^th Century, the Egmont lease ended and a succession of tenant farmers followed under the ownership of the Earls of Limerick.

Around 1826 Patrick Browne, a grandson of Sir John Browne of Ballingarry Co Limerick developed the present farm residence. He re-roofed the southern half of the 18^th Century Georgian house E-W and reduced the 1^st floor windows for privacy. He extended the house westward incorporating the old stable as a kitchen with a bedroom in the grain loft. He linked the two developments with a stairs and entrance hall and a south-facing front door let into the curtain wall between the stable/kitchen and the earlier houses. The Georgian portion was roofed with slate and the kitchen/hallway portion was thatched.

The gardens and arboreta were restored and the property was maintained in quiet elegance over the next three generations. In 1934 the property was sold to Mr Jeremiah Sullivan who was the last resident owner. Except for re-roofing the thatched kitchen/hallway with corrugated iron sheeting in 1955 following a fire, he left the place unchanged through his reign as undisputed ‘King of the Castle’ which ran for fully 50 years until his death in his 98^th year in 1984.

The 19^th Century farm house is now in a derelict state. Some 150 yards west of Ardoyne bridge, on the right bank of the river, lies what local historians suggest are the remains of a Motte & Bailey and the site of the first Magner stronghold in the district. But that, as the Seanchaidhthe say, is a story for another day.