Lisronagh Castle is a 16th century tower house built on the site of an earlier castle. The original fortification at Lisronagh was believed to have been built by William de Burgh in the 12th century but this was in all likelihood a wooden construction later replaced with stone. De Burgh was an Anglo-Norman knight who was granted large estates in this part of the country. In 1333 the land was held by Elizabeth de Burgh a descendant of William. According to The Ormond Deeds of 1530 the original stone castle was destroyed by Edmund Fitz Piers Butler of Dunboyne. The deeds record the granting by Richard Howet to Peter Butler, Earl of Ormond, ‘the site of his castle at Lisronagh’. In 1664 the castle and manor are recorded as being in the possession of Ellyn Butler, late Countess Dowager of Ormond and the Earl of Ormond. Though Lisronagh in the present day could not even be described as a village with its population hovering around 184 in 1837 Samuel Lewis records a population of 981 and documentation from the 14th century evidences a population possibly exceeding 400.
Ordnance Survey letters from 1840 record that at least the ground floor of the tower house was inhabited at the time of their inspection, ‘A door, locked, prevented entrance to the ground floor; a man who lives in [the] castle and was absent on business somewhere, having secured it on his going out’. The castle is in a relatively good state of preservation considering its openness to the elements, the door in its north wall shows evidence of a murder-hole and to the right of the entrance is a stairway giving access to the upper levels. The ground floor has an impressive and strong vaulted roof. It is possibly to reach the 2nd and 3rd floors via a continuation of this stairs but anything further is impossible. According to Patrick Lyons (1937) in an article on the Norman Antiquities at Lisronagh in the Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland It appears that the tower house lost its battlements around 1830 during the building of the adjacent Church of Ireland. Lyons also recorded a variety of earthworks to the south west of the castle that evidenced a medieval settlement. This charming tower-house is definitely one that gave me a small flashback of how truly otherworldly and wild these places seemed in childhood.
GPS: 52.41583, -7.70283
Hi This is such an amazing resource, but who are you, and how did you make such a good collection of locations? I can’t find anything about the creators.
Thank you for your kind words. I use google maps and pinpoint a variety of ;places I wish to visit in future using hundreds of different resources, maps, books, journals, online etc and also stuff I stumble across as I am based in Ireland and we have a lot to see here.