The Devil’s Bit Mountain always captivated me as a child, and of course it is a tale that would make any child’s ears prick up. There are many variations of it but the main crux of the story is that for whatever reason the Devil was angered into taking a bite out of the mountain and either spat or threw what he had bitten all the way to Cashel, thus creating the Rock of Cashel and explaining the mountain’s unusual shape. However, the focus of this piece is of course on the structure known as Carden’s Folly and the Carden family. The Cardens were an Anglo-Irish family who came to Ireland in the 17th century purchasing large tracts of land across Templemore and Barnane and becoming the principal landlords in the area. The Folly was constructed under the direction of John Rutter Carden in 1860 who himself was quite the reprehensible character.
Carden was born in 1811 and inherited the estate in 1842. Soon after this he attempted to extend the demesne lands for the palatial family mansion by removing small tenant farmers from their lands. He was ruthless in the pursuit of evictions and expelled so many poor tenants he was described as the ‘Tipperary Exterminator’ by a local newspaper. Locals also gave him the name ‘Woodcock’ due the many failed attempts there were to assassinate him by tenants and local agrarian societies, for the uninitiated a woodcock flies erratically and rapidly through thick grass and bush. In 1854 Carden also was imprisoned for the attempted kidnapping of a woman he was infatuated with named Eleanor Arbuthnot, who lived at Rathronan House, near Clonmel. He had met her in 1852 and quickly became obsessed, following her everywhere. Her family discouraged him but Carden believed she felt the same as him and it was only her family that were preventing them from marrying. He wrote her a letter suggesting that they elope, which she empathically rejected, it was then he decided to abduct her. Carden roped in six manservants who were told that Eleanor had agreed to the abduction, and tried to seize her from her carriage as she rode home from Rathronan Church on Sunday 2nd July (Rathronan Church was previously featured here). Thankfully Eleanor’s sister and servants managed to put up enough of a struggle that the abduction was abandoned. Carden was arrested soon after and found with loaded pistols, two bottles of chloroform and several coils of rope, he had a supply line of horses waiting to take him from Templemore to Galway and had also chartered a steamboat to take them to London. Two years later in July 1854 he was sentenced to two years hard labour in Clonmel Jail, serving the full two years. Upon his release he travelled to India; unfortunately on his return he continued to stalk Eleanor, following her to Dublin and then to England. Ultimately he was arrested again in October 1858 and charged at Kingstown Court but the charge was dropped once further securities were given to prevent any further abduction attempts. Despite this he wrote a ‘Letter to the People’ asking for Eleanor’s forgiveness but still saying that she did not know her own mind and was being poorly influenced by those around her. He stated he had been misrepresented in the press and been a victim of police surveillance, denouncing Dublin Castle and its ‘standing army of police’. Carden seemed to become more erratic and eccentric, installing extensive Turkish baths in Barnane House, and constructing a variety of gate lodges and ornamental structures including the folly constructed in 1860. He died at Barnane, unmarried, in 1866.
The remains of the folly, also known as the Rock Tower, are quite perilous with parts of it very visibly crumbling. It is a three-story round castellated tower with machicolations on the parapet. It is built of roughly coursed limestone with its windows and water spouts worked out of dressed limestone. It is surrounded by a steel fence that on our visit had been somewhat destroyed but I would recommend exercising extreme caution in approaching the tower as its entirely unstable and the last thing that is needed is another victim to Carden’s delusions.
GPS: 52°48’47.3″N 7°55’04.0″W