Armorial plaque (present location), Rochfordstown, Co. Cork

Co. Cork |

Estate Features

Armorial plaque (present location), Rochfordstown, Co. Cork

Mortared into the wall of a nineteenth-century stable in County Cork is a carved stone plaque that has no particular business being there.

It bears the date 1630, a coat of arms, and the quiet remnants of a social world that has otherwise almost entirely disappeared from this stretch of East Cork.

The plaque carries the impaled arms of Sir Robert Travers and his wife Elizabeth Boyle. In heraldry, impalement is the practice of combining two coats of arms side by side on a single shield to represent a married couple, and this example would originally have been associated with a castle whose ruins lie roughly eighty-five metres to the north-west. The Boyle connection is significant: Elizabeth was almost certainly from the wider family of Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Cork, whose influence over Munster in the early seventeenth century was enormous. The date 1630 places the plaque squarely within that era of New English settlement and the building programmes that accompanied it, when carved armorial displays of this kind were a way of asserting lineage, ownership, and status on newly consolidated estates. At some point, the plaque was removed from its original context, possibly when the castle fell out of use, and found its way onto the stable wall, which forms part of the farm buildings of Castlewhite House.

Rated 0 out of 5

Visitor Notes

Review type for post source and places source type not found
Added by
Picture of Pete F
Pete F
IrishHistory.com is passionate about helping people discover and connect with the rich stories of their local communities.
Please use the form below to submit any photos you may have of Armorial plaque (present location), Rochfordstown, Co. Cork. We're happy to take any suggested edits you may have too. Please be advised it will take us some time to get to these submissions. Thank you.
Name
Email
Message
Upload images/documents
Maximum file size: 100 MB
If you'd like to add an image or a PDF please do it here.

Advertisement