Ballybeg Castle (in ruins)

Situated on flat pasture with good views in all directions and nearby ringfort (TN048-014----) to the N. A four-storey rectangular tower house (ext. dims. 9.1m N-S; 10.5m E-W; wall T 2.05m) constructed with roughly coursed limestone rubble and punch-dressed quoins. A base-batter is visible with a protruding basal plinth. Described in the Civil Survey (1654-6) as 'a castle out of repaire and is al wast by reason of their fastnes to the redd bogg of Ely' (Simington 1931, vol. 1, 48). 'The Earle of Ormond' is listed as proprietor (ibid.) The crease line of a gable of a two-storey seventeenth-century house (TN048-017002-) is visible on the E wall. The main doorway is now located off-centre to the N on the E wall and consists of a round-arched doorway. This gives access to a lobby from which the ground floor and mural stairs were reached, the latter in the NE angle of the tower. An overhead murder-hole protected the lobby. There were wooden ceilings over the ground and second floors and a barrel vault over the first and third floors. Access to the upper floors was not possible due to the blocked-up mural stairs. The ground-floor chamber has two large adjoining segmental-arched embrasures in both the N and S walls with a smaller embrasure containing a slit ope which has a double splay both internally and externally in the W wall. At first-floor level there is a mural passage in the N and S walls with single-light slit opes set into embrasures in the E and W walls. A large twin-light ogee-headed window provides light for the main chamber at second-floor level. A series of smaller barrel-vaulted chambers at this level in the E and W walls are carried up in small towers beyond the line of the wall-walk on the N and S walls. This plan appears to be typical for tower houses of this region. Garderobe chambers are contained in the NW angle of the tower, with the outlet visible at the base of the W wall. There are no visible remains of a bawn in the immediate vicinity of the tower house. The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Tipperary. Vol. 1 - North Tipperary' compiled by Jean Farrelly and Caimin O'Brien (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2002). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload/revision: 22 September 2008

Ballybeg Castle is a four-storey tower house, likely built in the late 15th or early 16th century by a local Gaelic or Anglo-Irish lord for defensive purposes. Its construction reflects the regional trend of fortified residences during the late medieval period in Ireland.