What is recorded here

Castle Cranagh is a circular limestone tower in County Tipperary, reduced to three storeys when nearby residents likely chopped off its top during the eighteenth century. John Purcell owned the land in 1640, and the 1654 Civil Survey already called it ruined, suggesting the stone column had lost its highest purpose before it lost height. The surrounding bawn and pasture preserve the shape of a household that stopped looking upward and began living beside the tower instead.

Situated on flat pasture in undulating countryside. Described in the Civil Survey (1654-6) as the 'ruines of an old castle' (Simington 1931, vol. 1, 28). John Purcell is listed as proprietor in 1640 (ibid.). A circular tower house (TN029-087001) built with roughly coursed limestone rubble which now stands three storeys high but originally stood higher and was probably truncated in the eighteenth century by the occupants of a nearby Georgian house. An eighteenth-century bawn located to the S of the tower house possibly incorporates part of the original bawn with a possible seventeenth-century gable-ended thatched house incorporated into the E wall of the bawn. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien. Date of upload: 22 September 2008

John Purcell held Castle Cranagh in 1640, and it was noted as an "old castle" with ruins by the 1654–5 Civil Survey. It is remembered as part of the historical landscape of early modern Ireland, reflecting landownership and conflict in the period.

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