Portland Castle (in ruins)

Situated on a natural rise of ground on the floodplains of the River Shannon which flows to the W of the site. Portland Castle or the castle of Portaulochain (The Bank of the Wild Fowl) was built by Eoghan O'Madden in the fourteenth century (Gleeson 1915, vol. 2, 315-16). The annals (AFM) record in the year 1441 that the castle of Portland was taken by William Mac Uachtrach (ibid., 315-16) and the OS Letters note that the castle was captured by Redmund Burke in 1600 (O'Flanagan 1930, vol. 2, 69). The Civil Survey (1654-6) records the castle as an 'old stumpe of a castle close by the shannon side' (Simington 1934, vol. 2, 319). The site now consists of the poorly preserved remains of a rectangular tower (ext. dims. 10.4m x 7.2m) whose side walls survive on average to 1.7m high. The walls were constructed with roughly coursed limestone rubble with slight base-batter; the interior is covered in rubble infill. A portion of the doorway sits on the top of the rubble infill consisting of a rebated punch-dressed stone voussoir with reamed margins of late sixteenth/seventeenth-century style. The above description is derived from 'The Archaeological Inventory of County Tipperary. Vol. 1 - North Tipperary' compiled by Jean Farrelly and Caimin O'Brien (Dublin: Stationery Office, 2002). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Date of upload/revision: 22 September 2008

Eoghan O'Madden built Portland Castle in the 15th century. It is remembered for its strategic location on the River Shannon floodplains and as a historic example of Gaelic Irish castle architecture.