Cloghjordan Ho. — Oxpark

Cloghjordan House has a façade of five bays between two-bay projections. The central portion (L 16.9m; Wth c. 8m; wall T 0.8m) dates to the seventeenth century. It is a two-storey, T-plan house which was built onto the W wall of an earlier tower house (TN016-001001-). It has a steep-pitched roof and massive projecting chimney on the W gable which is rendered with concrete and incorporated into a later eighteenth/nineteenth-century extension. There is also a large chimney at the E of the house which has been built onto the tower house. A dog-leg stairs (Wth 1.15m) is located in the T-projection (ext. dims. L 4m; Wth 3.4m), which is two and a half storeys high. The windows in the back appear to be later inserts, one at ground-floor level in the projecting gable, one above this at gable level and one at first-floor level. The back of the S end of the house has a later building attached. This stone building with brick chimney in the W corner juts out just beyond the line of the projecting T of the seventeenth-century gable. James Harrison, a colonel in Cromwell's army built a residence here in the mid to late seventeenth century (Anon. 1986, 5, 13). A 'moat' or ditch is depicted on the OS 6-inch maps as surrounding the house on almost three sides. This survives in part as a deep, partly water-filled fosse, particularly wide at the NE corner. It disappears under farmyard buildings to the N, reappears NW of house and runs into a stream on the W side. Described in the Civil Survey (1654-6) as an 'old castle & Bawne wch did belong to the sd. Charles Carroll together wth two thatcht houses and fower cottages' (Simington 1934, vol. 2, 288). 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