Iretons castle (in Ruins) — Lehinch

Situated on a low natural rise of ground on the floodplains of the River Shannon which is located to the NW. The present Ireton's Castle was depicted as 'Derry Castle' on the 1st ed. OS 6-inch map and the Civil Survey refers to this site as DerrymcEgan castle (Simington 1934, vol. 2, 317). On the 1840 edition, Ireton's Castle was marked at a different location near to Belle Isle House where a nineteenth-century windmill (TN004-015----) survives today. It is possible that the windmill was built on the site of Ireton's Castle some time in the nineteenth century. However, it is also possible that there may have been only one castle at the present location (i.e. on OS 3) and that it may have been refortified or rebuilt by Ireton around 1650 (Gleeson 1915, 316). The name of the castle may have then changed from Derry Castle to Ireton's Castle. A seventeenth-century, three-storey, Z-plan fortified house, built with roughly coursed limestone rubble. It consists of a central rectangular block (int. dims. 7.5m E-W x 6.3m N-S; wall T 1.6m) with spear-shaped angle towers at NE and SW angles. The bawn wall (TN003-001002-) runs off the NE angle tower and returns onto the NW angle of the building with nineteenth-century farmhouses built against the bawn wall. The fortified house is accessed from a round-arched rebated doorway, dressed with slight faint reaming across its surface, off-centre to the N on the W wall with a two-storey fore-building (Wall T 0.75m; int. dims. 3.9m x 4m) built up against the W face of the building. It is unclear if this fore-building is contemporary or a later addition to the fortified house. The doorway, which is protected inside by an overhead murder-hole, gives access to the ground-floor chamber from which the two angle towers are accessed. All floors in the building were wooden and were carried in the thickness of the wall. All the chambers in the angle towers are accessed off the main rectangular block. There are fireplaces at first and second-floor level in the NE angle of the main chamber with a fine rectangular chimney stack protruding from the NE angle of the building. The NE and SW angle towers have gun loops at first and second-floor levels. An interesting feature of the angle towers is that they were built in two phases consisting of a triangular projecting tower two storeys high built onto a three-storey high circular angle tower giving the tower its distinctive pear-shaped appearance. The triangular projection is accessed from a flat-headed doorway at second-floor level from the circular angle tower in both angles. The building has the appearance of a fortified house with star-shaped artillery fort style angle towers. At wall-walk level there are bartizans on the NE and SW angle towers supported on fine cut-stone corbels. Between the corbels of the bartizan there are large drip-stones protruding from the face of the wall. The interior walls of the building are obscured by the dense cover of ivy. The angle towers with their triangular external appearance are similar to the angle towers at Kilcolgan fortified house, Co. Offaly, which had a datestone of 1649 over its destroyed entrance (O'Brien and Sweetman 1997, 157-8). According to Gleeson (1915, 316) the castle was built around 1650 by Ireton during the Cromwellian period. 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