What is recorded here

Cloch na Cor-Rátha still holds its shape on the northern ridge, a three-storey limestone block with a small tower projecting at the southwest angle. The east wall rises higher than the rest, while ivy buries the places where windows and rooms may have faced the valley. Pierce Butler owned the land when the Civil Survey passed it by, suggesting the house belonged to someone the survey never troubled itself to name. A quarry, farmyard and road now crowd the rock, turning the castle into a boundary marker for ordinary life rather than a forgotten monument.

There is no mention of a castle in Graiguepadeen in the Civil Survey (1654-6) when Pierce Butler of Callan, Co. Kilkenny is listed as proprietor of the lands in 1640 (Simington 1931, vol. 1, 121). It is situated on top of a natural rock outcrop at the N end of a N-S ridge with good extensive views in all directions. A quarry and farmyard are located immediately to the NW of the castle and there is a road c. 25m to the N. There are concrete walls constructed up against the external face of the S wall of the house. A silage pit has been built into the W face of the ridge to the W of the castle. There is a bawn (TS042-018001-) to the S of house. Ivy covered remains of a three-storey L-plan house (ext. dims. E-W 10.3m; N-S 10.2m; wall T 1.2m) with a solar tower (ext. dims. E-W 2.95m; N-S 3.5m; wall T 0.8m) at the SW angle which projects 2.5m beyond the main block. It is built with roughly coursed limestone rubble with a slight base-batter visible. There is no surviving evidence of cut stone features. The E wall stands three storeys high while the N and S walls only survive two storeys high and the W wall survives to a height of 2.5m. The solar tower survives to first-floor level and was accessed from the main house. The house had wooden floors throughout, the supporting floor joists of which were carried on offsets at all floor levels. The house was entered through a round-arched doorway in the centre of the E wall at ground-floor level. At this level there are broken out windows in the centre of the S and W wall. There is only one window visible off centre to the S in the E wall, any other features on this or the N wall are obscured by the dense ivy overgrowth. The ground floor (int. dims. N-S 8.2m; E-W 8.2m) of the main chamber appears to consist of a single room with no evidence for internal partitions. The ground floor cross-wall between the tower and the main chamber is mainly destroyed with only the partial remains of the E wall returning off the S wall of the tower. This is possibly a late medieval or 17th-century fortified L-plan house with a bawn. According to the OS Letters this castle was known locally as 'Cloch na Cor-Rátha' (Cloghnacoraha) or 'Carey's Rock' (O'Flanagan 1930, vol. 1, 160). Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 26 August 2011

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