Coolquill Castle, County Tipperary (TS054-053----)

On a slight rise in a field, with a possible motte (TS054-054---) located 560m to the E and deer park (TS054-071----) immediately to the E. The Lord of 'Cowellqueyle' is named in a list of suitors to the Earl of Ormond in 1508 (COD III, 335). The Civil Survey (1654-6) describes 'a good castle yett wanting repayre & a Bawne & a thatcht house' and lists the proprietor in 1640 as 'Morish Stoke of Coolequiell Irish Papist' (Simington 1931, vol. 1, 130). Three storeys remain of the original five-storey tower house. According to the landowner the upper storeys were demolished about forty years ago (c. 1950s). The tower house is of roughly coursed sandstone rubble construction with cut quoins intact, although those on the W angle are denuded, and a base-batter (H 2.4m; Wth c.0.15m). There are vaults over the ground and second floors. A T-shaped house was built up against the E end of the NE wall of the tower house. An extension at the W of the house incorporated the remainder of the NE wall, up to and including first-floor level. The tower house entrance is at the W end of the NW wall, with a yett-hole at the apex of the pointed doorway. This leads to an entrance lobby, above which there is a murder-hole. Off this entrance lobby are two partially collapsed doorways, one leading directly into the ground-floor vaulted chamber, the other into a second lobby which gives access to the mural stair. The stair rises in the NW wall and continues along the NE wall before a spiral stair rises in the E angle, just above second-floor level. The opening for a spy hole, in the internal face of the NW wall of the lobby area, has been destroyed, though the hole itself survives (D 1.1m). The ground floor was lit by two windows, one in the NE, blocked, the other in the SE wall. The first floor is accessed from the mural stair in the NE wall. It was lit by two windows, one in the SW, broken-out, the other, blocked, in the NW wall. The murder-hole was accessed from a niche in the NW window embrasure. A doorway at the NE end of the SE wall leads to an L-shaped garderobe chamber which runs along the SE wall and turns in the S angle. It is lit by a window in the SE and SW wall. There were two small attempts to buttress the E end of the NE wall, the more substantial of which is tearing free of the wall, while the smaller buttress has partially collapsed. The second floor was entered from the mural stair in the NE wall. It was carried on a wooden floor supported by corbels on the NE and SW walls. It was lit by two windows, one single-light ogee in the SW and the other broken out in the NW wall. In the NE side of the NW window embrasure there is an entrance to an inaccessible mural chamber in the N angle. In the SE wall there is a door recess cut into the vault which may have given access to an L-shaped garderobe chamber which runs along the SE wall and S angle. Internally many of the features are unstable. Part of the ground-floor vault has collapsed, door arches and window embrasures are falling and the lintels in the garderobe chambers are badly split and some, particularly in the upper chamber, have collapsed. The NW wall is particularly unstable due to the later insertion of a fireplace and flue which were knocked through the masonry and thus seriously undermined the wall. It has a large gaping hole at second-floor level and a bad crack which continues down to the original ground-floor doorway. The SW face also has a number of cracks. The S angle of the tower house collapsed on 2 February 2021.