What is recorded here

Castle of Pallasbeg, a tower house recorded in repair during the Civil Survey era in County Limerick, has lost its exact footprint though it still stands beside Pallasbeg House on the old Down Survey map. Tadhg O'Brien held the land, mills, orchard and ruined castle when surveyors walked the valley, suggesting a household large enough to maintain stone walls and working waterwheels. The castle may have been a residence, a guard post or a boundary marker for the Mac Brien lineage, but its chambers no longer answer questions. What remains is a line on a map and a name repeated in surveys, waiting for someone to dig behind the house or read the bones of the ground.

The precise location of the medieval castle of Pallasbeg within the townland has not been identified (Westropp 1906-7, 199). Seymour (1907, 371) recorded the following details about this building; 'The Down Survey notes that "there is at Tuogh Killuragh a Castle in repaire, and a Stonehouse [LI015-048----] in repaire, and Six Cabbins" (this last is evidently the village alluded to above); while the Civil Survey speaks of "Tuogh and Pallisbeg, two ploughlands with a castle in repaire, a Bawen, a stone-house [LI015-048----], an Orchard, two mills seate, and the demolished Castle of Pallisbeg." The Mac Brien family owned these castles and lands'. The 1654-56 Civil Survey recorded that Tadhg O'Brien was the owner of the lands of 'Towgh an Pallicebeg' on which there stood a 'Castle in repaire a Bawen a stone house an Orchard two Millseates and the Demolished Castle of Pallicebeg' (Simington 1938, 8). The terrier of the Down Survey map of Tuogh Parish stated that 'There is at Twogh Killuragh a Castle in repaire and a stone house in repaire and six Cabbins' (NLI, MS 718). A tower house type castle is depicted in the vicinity of Pallasbeg House on the Down Survey map of Tuogh Parish. See attached Down Survey map of the Parish of Tuogh Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 30 June 2020

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