Mocollop Castle (in ruins) — Mocollop

Situated on rock outcrop on the N side of the floodplain of the W-E Blackwater River, and c. 160m from the river. This is a Fitzgerald castle with references dating from at least 1462, when James, the seventh Earl of Desmond died there. The barony of Coshmore and Coshbride was inherited by Gerald Óg, the youngest son of the eight Earl, and almost all the castles in the barony are Fitzgerald castles. Mocollop was granted to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1587 (O'Connell Redmond 1918, 1-4). It was captured by the Irish in 1642 but abandoned soon after, and it was recaptured in 1645 by the Earl of Castlehaven. In 1647 the castle was taken and held for the Crown by Lord Inchiquin, and c. 1650 it was attacked unsuccessfully by Cromwell (Grattan-Flood 1918). The castle is now surrounded by farm buildings. This is a circular keep (ext. diam. c. 12.5m; int. diam. c. 6.5m; H c. 20m) of five storeys, with vaulting over the third floor, but the tower is largely destroyed at E and S above the ground floor. The upper part of the tower may be a later medieval rebuild. There is an inserted doorway on the ground floor at S that led through a lintelled lobby (dims. 2.6m E-W; 1.1m N-S; H 2.05m) and a lintelled doorway (Wth 0.9m) to the ground floor, which is featureless apart from a window at W that may be inserted. The original entrance to the keep, now destroyed, was above the ground floor doorway where it gave access to the first floor and to stairs that wind anti-clockwise around the keep, providing access to all the floors up to the third floor at NW. The first floor is featureless, apart from a large inserted window at W, and smaller ones at N and E. Of the second floor nothing survives apart from a window embrasure with plank-centering and a large window at W. The lintelled doorway to the third floor survives, and there is an elaborate window with a stepped head in limestone opposite it in the stairs passage. Shortly beyond this point the stairs becomes a newel stairs to the fourth floor where where a short passage leads to a machicolation at W. All the chambers are circular in plan, apart from the fourth which might be octagonal, but little of it survives apart from the lintelled doorway and a doorway to a mural chamber, just to its N. No firplaces are evident in the building, but a large block of masonry like a chimney stack rises over the wall at W. The keep is within a small ward with scarcely 2m clearance to the curtain wall which has three rectangular towers including a gate-tower at W, but the curtain wall only survives between that tower and the S tower. The S tower is a rectangular defensive tower of two floors, with no features on the ground floor, and only two lights at the first floor. Access to the first floor was along the wall-walk from the W gate-tower, but the wall walk barely survives. The gate-tower (ext. dims. c. 5.3m E-W; c. 4.5m N-S; surviving H 7m) has an outer rebate for a drawbridge, with a portcullis niche inside this. There are embarsures with long loops or lights (Wth 0.4m; H 0.8-1.2m) in the N and S walls of the entrance passage, that on the N having plank-centering in the roof of its embrasure. A newel stairs at the SE angle of the gate-tower leads to the first floor which doesn't survive and to the wall-walk of the curtain wall that gave access to the S tower. Beneath the floor of the entrance passage are two longitudinal pits (L. 2.65m E-W; Wth 0.55-0.7m), now lintelled over (H 2.7m), which would have functioned originally as couterweight pits for the drawbridge. An ivy-covered rectangular tower (int. dims. 3m N-S; 2.15m E-W; max. surviving H 9.5m) just NE of the keep was entered originally by a doorway (Wth 1.13m), now blocked, from the court. The ground floor is featureless apart from a window in the E wall and a loop at the SE angle, but the ceiling was wooden. The original lintelled entrance (Wth 0.7m) to the first floor was in the W wall from the wall walk of the curtain wall, and the chamber has a loop in the W wall and an ogee-headed window in the N wall under the N-S barrel vault which has wicker-centering. From the first-floor entrance at W a passage leads through the S wall to a newel stairs at the SE angle, which would have given access to the destroyed parapet. Grattan-Flood, W. H. (1918) Notes and Queries - 'Additional notes on Mocollop castle'. JCHAS 24, 1-7. O'Connell-Redmond, G. (1918) The castles of north-east Cork and near its borders. JCHAS 24, 1-6, 62-6, 93-103, 145-51. The above description is derived from the published 'Archaeological Inventory of County Waterford' (Dublin: Stationery Office, 1999). In certain instances the entries have been revised and updated in the light of recent research. Revised by: Michael Moore Date of upload: 16 February 2011