What is recorded here

Kilfadda castle stands as a ruined D-shaped tower on a raised platform in County Tipperary, its groin-vaulted ground floor still defying the decades. What remained of its walls and arches likely fed the nineteenth-century houses nearby, their stones reborn in gables and doorways. The castle did not disappear so much as it moved, its bones scattered into the living walls of the village that forgot where they came from.

Situated on the SW face of a raised platform which may be the location of the bawn area and which is defined by a drain. Described in the OS Letters as an 'old castle which is now nearly destroyed. One small apartment with a stone arch over it remains; and a bit of a wall remains, isolated, on one side of which some vestiges of a stone arch are seen attached at top' (O'Flanagan 1930, vol. 3, 28). In the Civil Survey 1654-6 the castle is described as a 'ruined old castle, Irrepayreably demolished' (Simington 1934, vol. 2, 347). The present remains consist of a poorly preserved roughly D-shaped tower (TN007-002001) surviving one storey high with an impressive groin-vaulted roof over the ground floor. A destroyed window is located at NE with a possible blocked-up doorway at the S. There are portions of a bawn wall attached to the NE and SW faces of the tower suggestive of a flanking tower on a bawn or curtain wall. A modern laneway intersects the site immediately to the S of the tower with a poorly preserved building located immediately to the S of the laneway. Recent work on the building indicates that it was constructed in the nineteenth century utilising some medieval stone possibly from the destroyed castle. A second nearby nineteenth-century house has a roughly dressed chamfered and rebated door jamb protruding fom the gable of the house. 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

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