Castle — Lisfinny

Located towards the bottom of a S-facing slope overlooking the W-E Bride River, c. 160m to the S. This is a Fitzgerald castle with references dating with certainty from the Desmond Rebellion of 1579, after which it was granted to Sir Walter Raleigh (O'Connell Redmond 1918, 148-50). It was described as a ruined castle at Knocknamuch and the property of the Earl of Cork in 1641 (Simington 1942, 5). This is a rectangular tower house (ext. dims. 12.6m N-S; 9.25m E-W) of four floors with a base-batter, cut-stone quoins, a barrel-vaulted loft over the ground floor and a vault over the second-floor chamber. The entrance, now modified, towards the W end of the S wall, is beneath an external doorway at the loft level (Sherlock 2006, 88). The ground floor doorway leads directly under a murder-hole to the ground floor (int. dims. 8.2m N-S; 5m E-W), which has embrasures in the N, E and W walls. The loft overhead must have been accessed through a trap-door. Mural stairs rise from the S side of the W embrasure to the SW angle where a mural passage leads down through the S wall past the destroyed external doorway to a chamber commanding the murder-hole. From the head of the mural stairs, newel stairs in the SW angle rise to the upper floors. The first floor has tall rectangular lights in the E, W and S walls, a destroyed fireplace and oven in the E wall, and a garderobe at the SE angle. There are what might be two smoke-holes at the NE angle, and all the embrasures are segmented with wicker-centering. The second floor is entered through a pointed doorway and has tall rectangular windows in each wall, those on the S and W walls being ogee-headed. There is a destroyed fireplace in the E wall, while a garderobe at the SE angle is entered from the E side of the embrasure in the S wall. The third floor is over the upper vault and has tall limestone windows with stepped-heads and dressed ingoings in each wall, where they survive. There is a wall-walk overhead with a look-out over the stairs housing at the SW angle, but the crenelations do not survive. A retaining wall (Wth 0.5m; int. H 1.3m; max. ext. H 4.2m at S) c. 2-4m from the base of the tower on the S and E sides may be part of an original bawn. There are curved bastion-like features at the NE and SE angles. 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. O'Flanagan, M. (Compiler) (1929) Letters containing information relative to the antiquities of the county of Waterford collected during the progress of the Ordnance Survey in 1841. Typescript. Bray. Sherlock, R. (2006) Cross-cultural occurrences of mutations in tower house architecture: evidence for cultural homogeneity in late medieval Irealnd? JIA, vol. 15, 73-91. Simington, R. C. (ed.) (1942) The Civil Survey AD 1654-1656, vi, the County of Waterford. Irish Manuscripts Commission. Dublin. 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: 26 July 2011