What is recorded here

Castle, unclassified in Inchmore, County Kilkenny, Ireland: an ancient keep with a large Elizabethan house attached, set within a broad bawn beside the River Nore. The Grace family owned the property, but by the mid-nineteenth century not a stone remained above another and even the foundations had been uprooted. What is left is a ghost in a valley flat enough to swallow pride, a reminder that grand houses can vanish as quickly as they rise.

On the fairly flat floor of the Nore river valley, on a slight terrace c. 1m above the flood plain. Within a large bawn (KK009-002003-) c. 40m W of the River Nore. According to O’Kelly (1969, 12) this property was owned by the Grace family. Carrigan (1905, vol. 2, 326) describes it as, ‘an ancient keep with a very large Elizabethan house attached. Not a stone of it now remains over another, even its foundations having been all uprooted in 1849 or 1850’. However, it may have been levelled by 1839 as it is not depicted on the 1st (1839) ed. OS 6-inch map nor is it mentioned in the accompanying OS Letters. An antiquarian sketch, viewed from the SE, shows a castle with a later 16th-century house added onto the S side, all within a large bawn (Lightbrown 1985, 168). The castle, in the background of the sketch, has a ground-floor entrance in the E wall and has single-light windows at four levels above the doorway, though some may be inter-mural, perhaps indicating the position of a stair. The uppermost window in the S gable has two-lights. There is a parapet at the top with a bartizan on the NE angle. It is not visible at ground level. The ruins of another building are depicted N of the castle consisting of a N gable and large, two-storey high, round-headed opening in the E wall. Compiled by: Jean Farrelly Date of upload: 20 June 2016

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