Cloghans Castle — Cloghans,friarstown

Located in an area of gently undulating pastureland bordering Lough Conn, which is 450m to W. Named ‘Cloghans Castle’ on the 1838 and 1930 OS 6-inch maps, this tower house, said to have been built by the Barrets, is square (ext. c. 7.5m NE-SW; c. 7.5m NE−SW) in plan, with walls (T c. 1.8m) built of mortared limestone blocks. It stands to three storeys in height. The walls have a slight external base batter. The entrance doorway is at the N end of the SE wall. It has a bluntly pointed segmental arch; the jambs are robbed out. There is a semi-circular alcove feature (Wth 0.75m; D 0.55m; H c. 1m), now partly broken out, within the N frame of the doorway. The doorway leads directly into a single, large ground floor chamber. There are large, recessed embrasures in the each wall, with traces of wicker centering in the shallow arches. The embrasures in the SW, NW and NE walls are centrally placed, but due to the entrance doorway, the embrasure in the NE wall is located towards the S end of its wall. There is a rectangular window in the centre of each of the embrasures in the SE and SW walls, but both are blocked up. The embrasure in the NE wall is broken through, and this break is now blocked externally by a stone-built farm shed, of relatively recent date, which was built against the external face of the tower house. In the NW angle of the ground floor chamber, there is a low, narrow doorway (W 0.6m; H 1.2m), with a pointed segmental arch, and traces of iron door-fittings in the NE jamb. It leads, via a short passage through the thickness of the castle wall, into a three-quarter circle turret (diam. 4m; H c. 3-4m), which projects from the NE corner of the keep. The turret has a corbelled, conical three-quarter stone-built roof, which is largely intact, but the walls (T c. 0.8m) are ruined and broken out N−SE. This appears to have served as a flanking, ground floor gun-turret; a small gun-loop (H 10cm; Wth 4.5cm) remains intact in the turret wall at SW. At first floor level, there are stone corbels which once supported a timber floor, but there is no evidence of a stairs from ground to first floor level. There are deep embrasures in the NE, SE and SW walls of the first floor chamber. The embrasure in the NE wall has an off-centre, narrow ope; on its exterior face it has a decorated ogee-head, and a chamfered, dressed-stone surround and sill; one side of the window is broken out. There is a centrally-placed, rectangular window in the SE embrasure. A mural chamber extends through the NW wall, lit by a window which is visible in the external wall face. The doorway into the mural chamber is no longer evident. This mural chamber most likely contains a stairs to the second floor. It must also contain a garderobe, probably at its W end, as the sloping outlet (Wth 0.87m; D 0.76m) of a well-built garderobe shute opens at exterior ground floor level at the S end of the NW wall of the castle. At second floor level, there was also a timber floor (wall sockets and corbels are visible), and above this is an intact, stone-built vaulted roof, with traces of wicker tracery. The second floor chamber has a large embrasure in the SW wall, with the main vault continuing as a ceiling of the embrasure. In the NE wall there is a broken opening, probably to a mural chamber/stairs to the first floor. The quoin stones have been robbed out of the exterior angles of the castle walls at lower levels. The external wall faces are densely cloaked in ivy. A farm track skirts the SE side of the castle. Compiled by: Jane O’Shaughnessy Date of upload: 1 April 2020