Bawn, Middlequarter, Co. Tipperary South

Co. Tipperary |

Castle Features

Bawn, Middlequarter, Co. Tipperary South

Standing on the northeast facing slope above the River Suir in County Tipperary, the ruins of Newcastle bawn offer a glimpse into Ireland's turbulent past.

The Civil Survey of 1654-6 records that Edmond Prendergast, an Irish Catholic gentleman, owned this manor in 1640, complete with court-leet and court-baron rights. What remains today is an irregular fortified enclosure measuring roughly 40 metres northeast to southwest and 58 metres northwest to southeast, though the southwestern wall has long since vanished. Within these defensive walls stands a tower house, positioned near where the missing southwestern wall would have been.

The most striking features of the bawn are its two mural towers; a circular tower at the southern angle and a square tower just 2.65 metres to the northwest, originally connected by the bawn wall. The circular tower rises three storeys high, its base reinforced with a batter extending 1.2 metres up the wall. Entry is through a pointed doorway on the north side, leading to a ground floor chamber bristling with gun loops. The first floor, accessed by external stairs, contains two windows, wall cupboards, and a small fireplace flue, whilst a mural staircase leads to the second floor with its own pair of windows and fireplace. During the eighteenth century, this military structure found new life as a gazebo or tea tower, complete with thick lime plaster rendering. An 1840 sketch by Du Noyer even shows it topped with a cupola and weather vane.

The square mural tower, entered through a round-headed doorway, tells its own story across two storeys. Its ground floor features a substantial fireplace in the northwest wall, intriguingly fitted with iron chain links at the back, alongside a wall oven and separate flue. The first floor, once supported by wooden beams, contains another fireplace, now partially blocked with brick, and a flat-headed window later fitted with a wooden frame. The northwest bawn wall itself incorporates four sequential pointed arched recesses with cut sandstone surrounds, each measuring 1.8 metres high and 2.9 metres wide. Between the circular tower and the bawn wall, a garderobe chute speaks to the practical considerations of daily life in this fortified manor, where defence and domesticity went hand in hand.

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