What is recorded here

Byrnesgrove castle stood beside the old Ballyragget to Castlecomer road with almost perfect walls until soon after 1820, when people threw them down and uprooted its cellars. That sudden violence turned a familiar local landmark into building material, leaving only a small fragment hidden in the gable of a cabin. The loss sounds less like neglect than like hunger, as if the neighbourhood needed its stones more than it needed to remember the shape that had held them.

According to Carrigan (1905, vol. 2, 105), the Irish name for the townland of Byrnesgrove is pronounced Bollanagnawch, the present name dating from the early part of the 18th century. He goes on to write that, ‘Byrnesgrove castle stood to the left, beside the old road from Ballyragget to Castlecomer. Its walls were almost perfect till soon after the year 1820, when they were thrown down and the cellars uprooted. Only a very small fragment of the ancient masonry now remains, being incorporated with the gable of a cabin’. The precise location of the castle within the townland is unknown. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 22 May 2017

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