Carrigrohane Castle, Carrigrohane, County Cork
Bence-Jones, Mark. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988 Constable and Company Ltd, London.
p. 59. “[Wallis, Hoare, Bt of Annabella] A C19 castellated house incorporating part of an old castle of the Barrett family on a crag above the River Lee. The estate was subsequently owned by the Wallis family, from whom it passed by marriage to the Hoares in late C18; the castle was a ruin for many years before it was built into the present house; which has a front of 3 storeys behind the battlements; and large mullioned windows with round-headed lights. Carrigrohane Castle features in a recent book of highly evocative reminiscences, The Road to Glenamore, by M. Jesse Hoare.”
The Buildings of Ireland. Cork City and County. Frank Keohane. Yale University Press: New Haven and London. 2020.
The fortified houses of the late C16 and early C17 constitute a bridge between the medieval tower house and the modern mansion. They were built by old Norman families, at Castle Lyons and Ightermurragh (Ladysbridge); by city merchants, such as the Archdeacons at Monkstown; by English settlers, at Baltimore, Coppinger’s Court (Rosscarbery) and Mallow; and by Gaelic chiefs, at Coolnalong (Durrus), Mount Long (Oysterhaven), Kanturk, Dromaneen (Mallow) and Reendiseart (Ballylickey). Twenty-two such houses survive in Cork.
In comparison to tower houses, these houses are better lit, have thinner walls, lack vaults, and feature timber floors and staircases as well as integral fireplaces. They are also notably symmetrical in plan and elevation, and some, such as Kanturk, incorporate proto-classical features. They generally retain some defensive features, such as door yetts, gunloops, bartizans and crenellated parapets, [p. 18] although their wall-walks were not all continuous, and in cases such as Mount Long and Monkstown were barely accessible. The other notable feature is the use of towers or turrets, influenced no doubt by the Elizabethan fashion for a quasi-military appearance derived from an earlier chivalric age. The arrangement of the towers gives rise to distinctive plan-forms: U plan (Coolnalong), Y-plan (Mallow and Coppinger’s court), L-plan (Dromaneen (Mallow) and Mossgrove (Templemartin), cross-plan (Kilmaclenine, Ightermurragh), X-plan (Kanturk, Monkstown, Mount Long, Aghadown), Z-plan (Ballyannan (Midleton), and T-Plan (Reendiseart). Baltimore, Carrigrohane, Castle Lyons, Myrtle Grove (Youghal) and Castlemartyr aer simple rectangular blocks. A number of Jacobean bawns with circular corner towers also survive, at Ballinterry (Rathcormac), Dromiscane (Millstreet), Dromagh, Clonmeen (Banteer) and Mossgrove.”
[no image] Detached four-bay three-storey over basement and with dormer attic house, built c.1850, incorporating fabric of an earlier building. Five-bay north elevation. Pitched slate roofs with battlements, gabled dormers, gablets and rendered chimneystacks. Ashlar limestone and rendered walls having string courses and corner bartizans to south-west and north-east corners. Square-headed openings with carved limestone tracery and label mouldings. Pair of timber panelled doors with strap hinges, approached by flight of limestone steps.
Appraisal
Dramatically sited on a rocky outcrop overlooking the Lee Valley, this building is an eye-catching addition to the surrounding landscape. Built on the site of an early seventeenth century fortified house built by the Barrett family, Windele noted in the early 1840s that only its walls remained. It is thought to have been restored by Deane and Woodward from 1849-50. It was occupied at the time by the McSwiney family, a local mill owning family who due to financial constraints, were soon forced to return the fully restored castle to the owners, the Hoare family.
http://landedestates.nuigalway.ie/LandedEstates/jsp/property-list.jsp?letter=C
A fortified house that came into the possession of the Hoare family through marriage with a member of the Baker family in the 1770s. In 1786 Wilson refers to Carrigrohan as the seat of Mr. Colthurst. Reconstructed in the 1830s by Augustus Robert McSweeny, a corn merchant, who also leased the floor mills nearby. At the time of Griffith’s Valuation Jane McSweeny was resident. The Castle later reverted back to the Hoares who owned it until the 1940s. They are mentioned by the Irish Tourist Association survey as resident there. It is still extant and was sold in 2017.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/property/carrigrohane-castle-on-sale-for-euro25m-332821.html
May 26 2016 by Paddy Barker
Carrigrohane Castle, the Co Cork former childhood family home of convicted fraudster Breifne O’Brien, has been put up for sale, ending more than 40 years of occupation by the O’Brien family.
The 400-year-old Tudor-style castle at the end of the Carrigrohane Road appeared without fanfare on a property website at the weekend, with a ‘price on application’ legend attached to its briefest of descriptions.
It is likely to be floated at about €2.5m, according to sources, though its named selling agent Michael Burns yesterday declined to comment publicly on the family’s plans for its sale.
It has been owned since the early 1970s by businessman and property investor Leo O’Brien and his wife Mary, who reared their children — including sons Breifne and broadcaster/journalist Daire O’Brien — within its walls and around its woodland walks.
Mr O’Brien owned valuable building investments on South Mall and Academy Street (now part of Opera Lane).
It’s understood that disgraced investor Breifne O’Brien held his wedding at Carrigrohane Castle to Dublin PR adviser and society figure Fiona Nagle in the in the mid-2000s, just before he was exposed in 2008 as having conned friends and family out of millions of euro to fund his extravagant lifestyle and run his own mansion homes.
Historic Carrigrohane Castle was brought back from a ruin in the 1830s and was largely rebuilt and maintained since. It is possibly the most dramatically-sited home in and around Cork City, on a high cliff overlooking the River Lee, between Ballincollig and the city.
For centuries, it dominated the skyline, looking out towards Muskerry, imperial over all it surveyed. At one stage, the demesne lands associated with the castle would have run to 1,500 acres, from the Model Farm Road to the eastern end of Ballincollig.
Now, the castle stands on a still-impressive and private 16 acres, half of it shielding woodland, and half in pasture and let out for farming use. The land and property offered for sale includes an entrance lodge by St Peter’s Church on Churchill Hill, and a guest house by a tennis court within the grounds.
The daft.ie property web listing says the castellated home has 6,500sq ft, with six bedrooms, and three bathrooms, and has all of the sort of features one would expect in a proper castle, with battlements, stone carvings, enormous fireplaces (but also oil central heating), gabled dormers, hefty internal beams and dark timbers, slate roof and look-out vantage points.
At one stage, the Muskerry tram would have passed under this craggily-set Corkleo castle, and a rockfall about 35 years ago on a section of cliff face caused the closure of the Carrigrohane Road for a period.
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