Roche Castle — Roche (dundalk Upr By; Roche Par.)

Situated high up on a rock outcrop which drops away steeply on all but the E side, and said to have been built in 1236 by Lady Rohesia de Verdun, grand-daughter of Bertram de Verdun, according to a reference in the Close Rolls (Sweetman 1875-86, no. 2334). The present remains, however, for the most part appear to be of a later date and were probably built by her son John, who died in 1274 (Leask 1973, 63). Richard Bellew obtained a grant in 1464 to repair the castle which was then ruinous (CLAJ 1943, 185). The castle, constructed of roughly coursed limestone ashlar and greywacke, consists of a curtain wall enclosing a subtriangular area, within which is situated a hall at the S side, an almost centrally placed free-standing rectangular structure and the remains of a gate-building in the E wall. The curtain walls rise directly from the edge of the bedrock on all but the NW side where the remains of a battered plinth can be seen. This section of the curtain, as well as the portion of the E wall which lies to the N of the gateway, has well-preserved merlons with rectangular holes below them at wall-walk level. These holes may have been used to carry a hourd or were possibly merely drain holes. The gateway, situated in the S end of the E wall, is cut off from a plateau to its E by a wide shallow rock-cut fosse; it consists of twin towers, sub-rectangular in plan behind the line of the curtain but almost semi-circular to the front. They are pierced by a wide entrance which was later partly filled in and narrowed. Access to the entrance is gained by a causeway across the fosse. A gap in the causeway c. 3m wide between two stone walls, now filled, was presumably originally bridged in some manner and protected by an outer building, probably a barbican. The towers, except for their E portions, have for the most part been destroyed. Their bases at the front or to the E of the curtain walls are stepped out and slightly battered up to a height of c. 3m above the bedrock. The towers and the wall joining them have a number of narrow opes up to 0.7m long facing in various directions and at several levels to cover the curtains as well as the gateway. The towers were four-storeyed with barrel vaults over the ground-floor level. The entranceway has a segmental arch showing in its W face, presumably the remains of a vault that would have covered the passage and carried the floor above. The N tower has a window at first-floor level with a rounded arch constructed of sandstone blocks. The S side of the S tower has the remains of wicker centring in the surviving portion of the barrel vault but none is evident in the N tower. A mural passage at first-floor level runs the full length of the curtain wall to the S of the gateway. It has three long narrow single-splayed opes facing E. Access to it is now gained through a doorway in the S wall of the S tower, but this does not appear to be original since the roof line alters markedly just inside the opening and the level of the passage also drops in the same area. The passage, which had plank centring, is situated between the E wall of hall and curtain. The gable end of the hall can be seen to rise considerably higher than the curtain wall to the E of it. There is a garderobe at second-floor level in the S tower of the gatehouse which exits in the SE angle where the curtain wall joins the tower. Access to it was gained from the second-floor level through an opening in the E wall which leads to an ope directly to the E and a very short passage to the S, at the end of which is the garderobe. Another garderobe chute in the NW angle of the curtain wall exits three quarters of the way up. There is a doorway immediately above it just below the parapet level. The hall is situated in the SE angle of the castle and is rectangular in plan. Its ground-floor level is one storey below that of the gate-building since the bedrock on which the castle is built drops away sharply to the S and W. The hall is only two storeys high at present but its E wall rises above the level of the rest of the building and the curtain wall. It has four opes at ground level in the S wall. The two central ones have long narrow slits while the side ones had windows with rounded arches of sandstone, though the W one has been destroyed and altered. At ground level there is a blocked exit in the S end of the E wall which was possibly a sallyport. The W wall has a short mural passage at its N end leading to a broken stairway which gave access to the first-floor level. There are three large windows at first-floor level in the S wall. They have two-centred arches of diagonally-tooled hard grey sandstone, surviving especially in the westernmost one, and all have window seats and large embrasures. The E wall has evidence of another floor above the second storey with a possible doorway which gave access from the S gate-tower. The E gable is pitched and the remains of the roof line can be seen at the N side. A window at second-floor level of the S tower would have looked directly S onto the pitched roof of the hall. Since the E gable of the hall rises above the level of the E curtain and would also have blocked the light from the second-floor level or third storey of the S gate-tower, it seems that the hall may have been heightened some time after the gate-building was completed. The E wall of the hall at ground-floor level is a metre thicker than that of the S, so it must have been designed to carry the mural passage. However, at the level over the mural passage the curtain wall and the E gable remain separated and, as stated above, rise to different heights. A smaller rectangular building was later added to the N side of the hall, but only its W portion now remains. Access to the great hall was through a doorway in the W end of its N wall so that the later building had to be entered first. The doorway for this annexe is in the W wall but the remains of an arch of a doorway can also be seen in the existing portion of its N wall. The free-standing rectangular structure in the ward is featureless and its date and use are problematical. Its doorway was almost certainly at the E side. It has at present two levels, one at ground level and one below. Its size and shape might suggest that it was a tower which fitted into an earlier curtain wall, but this would be hard to substantiate since it would mean that the curtain wall was originally set back quite a distance from the rock precipice, thus making it vulnerable to attack. The fact that the curtain wall is not bonded into the SW angle of the great hall might indicate that there was a later alteration to the line of the curtain. However, the uncoursed rubble masonry of the free-standing building is of poor quality, and the fact that it has a cellar area and that it has survived to the present day would indicate that it is a later rather than an earlier structure. It is difficult to imagine that an earlier tower in that position would not have been pulled down if the line of the curtain was altered, as it would have been in an awkward position in the courtyard. Also there is no obvious break in the NW portion of the curtain wall which would indicate its later alteration. The projecting tower in the NE angle, which is D-shaped in plan, is the only one in the curtain wall. Its remains are fragmentary but it had four levels, as evidenced by the top of the existing N wall face which shows how the fourth floor was carried on the wall thickness. The ground-floor level has a N-S barrel vault with the remains of wicker centring and holes around the tops of the walls to carry the wooden beams to support it while under construction. The entrance to this level is at the E end of the S wall, which also has a possible slit ope at its W end, now broken out. Only the S wall of the upper levels is extant and any structure which existed outside the line of the curtain wall at this level has been destroyed. There are no openings in the w