House - 17th century, Synone, Co. Tipperary

Co. Tipperary |

House

House – 17th century, Synone, Co. Tipperary

At Synone in County Tipperary, a fragment of limestone rubble wall clings to the southern face of a circular tower house, marking the spot where someone, at some point in the late sixteenth or seventeenth century, decided that a medieval fortification made a perfectly serviceable back wall for a newer domestic building.

The tower house still stands; the house built against it does not, at least not in any meaningful sense. What survives is the north angle of the later structure, two short wall stubs running southeast and southwest, their masonry deliberately keyed into the older stonework at the lower courses so the join would hold. The builders also cut vertical slots into the external faces of the tower house to accept the new walls, a detail visible in the masonry today.

The tower house itself appears in the Civil Survey of 1654 to 1656 as an old ruined castle, which suggests that by the mid-seventeenth century it was already regarded as ancient and decayed. In 1640, according to the same survey, the proprietor of record was Sir William St. Leger, Lord President of Munster, one of the more powerful Crown officials in Ireland during that period. Whether St. Leger was responsible for the later house is not established, but the chronology places him squarely within the window when the addition was most likely made. The physical evidence of that house is now reduced to a springing arch in the northeast gable, its base sitting about 1.25 metres above external ground level, which appears to have supported a fireplace opening; behind it, a blocked flue survives in the masonry. Higher up, at first-floor level, the outline of a small chamber or possibly a large window embrasure can still be read in the remaining stonework, the interior dimensions measuring just over a metre in each direction. The chimney itself is gone entirely, though its position can be inferred from where the flue runs relative to the tower house's second-floor level.

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