What is recorded here

Rathnaleen Castle stands as a ruined tower house on a north-facing pasture slope in County Tipperary, where only a three-metre length of its east wall still defies the sky. Rough limestone rubble and strange conglomerate stones mark the remains of a structure that once rose nearly seven metres high before time and weather stripped it away. The missing chambers suggest a busy domestic life, perhaps crowded with voices, firelight and ordinary human warmth now lost to centuries. What is left is not emptiness but a boundary between memory and forgetting, still holding its shape against the grass.

Situated on a N-facing slope in pasture. A ruinous tower house with only a length of the E wall (L 2.9m; T 1.25m; H 3m) surviving, constructed of roughly coursed limestone rubble with some conglomerate stones. The wall-footings continue N for a further 4m. A pile of collapsed masonry lies west of this wall. The E and W wall (H 6.7m) and part of the S wall were still standing when visited by the OS c. 1840, internal diam. E-W 7m (O'Flanagan 1930, vol. 1, 201). A bawn (TN021-025002-) to the S of the building is defined by a shallow, broad bank (Wth c. 6m) sloping gently to the exterior and almost level with the interior. The E return is not clear. Foundations of a building along the N bank of the bawn may be the remains of a gatehouse. 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

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