Springfield Castle — Springfield

The 1654-56 Civil Survey of Limerick recorded that in 1640 Sir Edmund Fitz Gerrald of Cloinegleisse an Irish Papist was the owner of 'Gortnatrabuid (Gort na Tiobraide/Springfield) by common estimation 60 acres with a Castle [LI054-005----] and Bawne and open quarie' (Simington 1938, 271). Springfield (Gort na Tiobraide) Castle and bawn described by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (NIAH) as follows; 'Attached Gothic Revival style country house with courtyard complex, commenced c. 1740, comprising attached eight-bay two-storey country house, rebuilt c. 1925, having single-bay three-stage entrance tower. Earlier two-bay three-storey wing to side (east) having single-bay three-stage gate tower with integral camber-headed carriage arch. Now in use as a holiday home/commercial accommodation. Attached to three-stage rectangular profile sixteenth-century tower house [LI054-005----] having rubble stone walls with battered plinth, dressed stone quoins and pointed arch vaulting above ground floor. Ruins of circular turret associated with original bawn wall to north-west of tower house. Rubble stone enclosing walls forming folly to rear elevation and attached to side (south) elevation of sixteenth century tower house, having tooled limestone octagonal corner turret surmounted by rendered pinnacle. The house and courtyard complex are the ancestral home of Lord and Lady Muskerry and occupies the site of an old bawn associated with the sixteenth-century tower house. A visible mark to the tower house represents part of the roof line of an earlier eighteenth-century mansion that was built by John Fitzmaurice, a grandson of the 20th Lord of Kerry' (https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/21905404/springfield-castle-springfield-dromcolliher-limerick; NIAH Reg. No. 21905404). Tower house (LI054-005----) and bawn described by Salter (2004, 96) as a 'roofless but well preserved late 16th century tower has four gables rising direct off the outer walls, and two circular bartizans at diagonally opposite corners. The second of the four storeys is vaulted. A circular bawn [LI054-005001-] flanker lies closely. Here in 1579 the Earl of Desmond's brother John inflicted a severe defeat on an English force. After Sir John Fitzgerald fled to France following the Treaty of Limerick in 1691 Springfield went to the FitzMaurices and later passed to the Deanes, Lords Muskerry. They laid out a new house in the bawn, but it was replaced after being burnt in the Civil War of 1923'. Compiled by: Caimin O'Brien Date of upload: 7 October 2021