The Breen, Sterns Folly — Bryanmore Upper

Situated on the W side of a high rise, in pasture, with good views to W, NW and S. The Down Survey map of Drumraney depicts a tower house type castle in Bryanmore [Brinemore] townland on or close to site of ‘The Breen’ (NLI, MS 723-4). On this map the castle is depicted standing on lands belonging in 1640 to John Dillon who is listed as an 'Irish papist' (ibid.). Depicted on the 1837 OS six-inch map as a circular-shaped enclosure ((WM023-070001-) outlined by two concentric lines with two buildings in the centre of the enclosure. One of these building is annotated ‘Sterns Folly’ with a circular shaped earthwork or mound immediately depicted to the E of the building. The annotation ‘The Breen’ appears to refer to the circular-shaped enclosure. This earthwork may have been a circular shaped bawn or courtyard of the castle of Bryanmore, annotated as 'The Breen' on six inch OS maps. Monument described in 1971 and 1979 as a roughly circular-shaped area enclosed by an earth and stone bank, an intervening fosse and an outer bank with entrance gap at SSE. A stone-faced rectangular depression in the NE quadrant appears to be a cellar or foundation of a building, which may be the remains of the tower house or Bryanmore Castle. A bank running N-S traverses the interior and there is a mound in the E quadrant with the ruins of a stone structure on top which may be the remains of Stern’s folly. Field banks and walls abut the exterior of the monument at N, NE, S and W. The remains of a small subrectangular house site (WM023-070002-) are visible outside the monument at SE. The remains of a road of uncertain antiquity are preserved in the field boundary 80m S of the enclosure. Well preserved bivallate enclosure with remains of stone buildings standing inside large field defined by well preserved field banks visible today on Digital Globe aerial photographs. These field banks enclosing the castle site and earthworks may be the remains of medieval field boundaries. Possibly the remains of a medieval castle and bawn that was reused as a landscape feature or folly in the post-1700 period by the Stearne family. According to Cox (1972, 22-25), in 600 AD, there was an ancient hostel site on Bryanmore Hill in Drumraney parish located midway between Ballymore and Athlone. The hostel is known as ‘Bruighean da Choga’ or ‘Da Choga’s Hostel’. In 1837 the Ordnance Survey identified this earthwork as the site of ‘Bruighean da Choga’ and described it as following; 'It is a fort of earth 204 paces in circumference and containing within it the ruins of castle [WM023-070001-] the erection of which tradition ascribes to the Dillons, who were lords of Cuircneach from the period of the English invasion. This castle is now a formless mass of ruins, but the fathers of the present old natives remembered to have seen a considerable portion of it standing, which was used as a fine ball-alley and visited by the best ball players then in Ireland, England and America!' (OSL Drumraney parish, Vol. 1, 37-8). It is possible that this enclosure could be pre-Norman in date and was then refortified in the medieval period by the construction of a stone castle inside the enclosure which was later reused as a landscape feature by the Stern family. Compiled by Alison McQueen, Vera Rahilly and Caimin O’Brien. Date of upload: 29 July 2019