Castle Otway, Templederry, Co Tipperary
Mark Bence-Jones. 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. 74. “(Otway-ruthven; IFR; Verney-Cave, Braye, B/PB) A handsome two storey mid-C18 house with a vast and largely C19 towerhouse at its back. The towerhouse incorporated part of the original Clohonan or Cloghanane Castle, which was granted to John Otway 1665 and later renamed Castle Otway. The C18 house which Dr Craig considers to have been designed by the same architect or builder as Lissenhall, Co Tipperary, another house of the Otways, had a seven bay front…. Burnt 1922.
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
p. 133. A fine mid Georgian two storey pedimented house. Good Doric pedimented doorcase. A tower house much altered is incorporated in the rere of the house. Built for the Otways. Burnt in 1922. Now a ruin.
Detached seven-bay two-storey over half-basement country house with three-bay pedimented breakfront, built c. 1750, and having four- and- five-storey medieval towerhouse rebuilt in nineteenth-century with three-storey elevations, with turret, to rear. Now in ruins. Roofless, with rendered brick chimneystacks to house and multiple offset limestone stack to towerhouse. Castellations, machicolations and corbel tables to towerhouse. Roughly-dressed limestone walls, slate hung to rear and south-west gable, with brick eaves course and ashlar quoins and plinth. Square-headed openings with limestone voussoirs and sills. Pointed-arch openings, some blocked, with ashlar limestone voussoirs and keystones and limestone sills to tower. Square-headed opening to entrance with carved limestone engaged Doric columns, entablature and pediment. Remains of limestone steps leading to entrance. Castellated walls with alternating round and rectangular openings having integral carriage-arch and with castellated mock gatehouse to south-west. Multiple-bay single-storey outbuildings to south-east.
Appraisal
The form of this impressive country house, despite its ruinous condition, is of apparent architectural design and execution. The house was built for the Otway family, and the medieval towerhouse, rebuilt in the nineteenth century, incorporates part of the original Cloghanane castle granted to John Otway in 1665. The house retains many original and interesting features such as the limestone sills, voussoirs and ashlar quoins. The doorway surround is particularly ornate and is obviously the work of skilled craftsmen. The towerhouse contrasts with the Georgian façade of the main house, thereby providing further interest to the site. The Tipperary Gentry. Volume 1. By William Hayes and Art Kavanagh. Published by Irish Family Names, c/o Eneclann, Unit 1, The Trinity Enterprise Centre, Pearse St, Dublin 2, 11 Emerald Cottages, Grand Canal St, Dublin 4 and Market Square, Bunclody, Co Wexford, Ireland. 2003.
Otway of Templederry
p. 169. John Otway, a lieutenant in Cromwell’s army, and formerly of Ingham Hall in Westmoreland, found himself at least in a geographically prominent position around 1655 when he took possession of the old Morris stronghold in Latteragh…By 1654 only the bare walls were left of the main structure, and the only usable part was the barbican or outer tower, which was still intanct.
Latteragh Castle, in the barony of Upper Ormond, had been the chief seat of the Morrises, descendants of Geoffrey de Marisco, the Norman knight who acquired it around 1200. Sir John Morris, recorded as the proprietor in 1641, had died in 1647 before the Cromwellian confiscations took place. It was his widow, Dame Catherine, who had been dispossessed by the Cromwellian settlement, and who was the recipient of a transplanters’ certificate for land set out to her in Connaught.
p. 170. John Otway added to his original grant by purchasing debentures for land from Cromwellian soldiers who had got small grants of land in Upper Ormond….But he was among the cromwellian grantees in an unsure position after the restoration of Charles II in 1660. James Butler the Duke of Ormonde, and then Lord Lieutenant, one of the king’s most loyal supporters, was at once put into pssession of his confiscated estate. Not only did the agile duke increase his share of Tipperary land, but ensured that his relatives and allies would also be restored to their lands. Among his distant relatives was Dame Katherine Morris, who was enabled to return and obtain recovery of Lattteragh for her son, another Sir John, who was married to a daughter of Purcell, the baron of Loughmoe.
John Otway, however, played his cards well. Knowing he had to give up his lands in Latteragh, he had, as early as January 1661, secured a certificate from the Court of Claims for a new grant of lands as yet undisposed of in Templederry parish…In 1684, to make doubly sure of his title, he used the good services of the earl of Mountrath, a former Cromwellian leader who still wielded much influence, to obtain the king’s patent under the Commisson of Grace for his new estate, comprising the old lands of the O’Kennedys of Cloghonan…
p. 171. John Otway also had the advantage that the Cloghonan Castle, a former O’Kennedy stronghold, was in fairly good shape, having been partly repaired… prior to 1654. He accordingly had a well defended residence at his disposal, which was later to be renamed Castle Otway. ..As early as 1650 John had married Phoebe Loftus, a daughter of Nicholas Loftus of Fethard, County Wexford, who was a son of Sir Dudley Loftus of Rathfarnham Castle. Accordingly he was already linked with the ascendancy, and was soon playing a prominent role among the new elite of Tipperary, by getting elected High Sheriff of the county for 1680.
John’s eldest son, also named John, died in 1722 without a male heir, and it was Henry, the eldest son of his thrid son, Thomas, who inherited Castle Otway. Thomas had established himself at Lissenhall, near Nenagh… He probably built a small residence there are first, when around the mid-18C an elegant middle-sized Georgian house was built where some members of the Otways lived for four generations. Through his wife Christian, daughter and co-heir of Richard Lock, Tullagory, MP, and his daughters, Thomas established early marriage and political alliances with other newly emerging ascendancy families in North Tipperary and elsewhere.
…Henry, who inherited Castle Otway, married Mary, daughter of Phanuel Cooke of Clonamiklon, near Uringlford. His eldest son and successor, Thomas, married Martha Prittie, a sister of Henry Prittie of Kilboy, 1st Lord Dunally. Cooke Otway, Henry’s younger brother, who became a captain of the Life Guards, was called after his mother’s maiden name. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Waller of Lisbrien. Both Henry and Thomas were educated at Trinity College, and in their time Otway House was built, incorporating the 16th/17th century O’Kennedy tower house, wiht its slit windows and gun loops. It wasa a fine two-storey mid-Georgian house, wiht a Doric pedimented doorcase, and had all the elegance of Lissenhall. Indeed there was such a striking similarity btween the two houses that it is though that the same architect was engaged for both. [Vanishing Houses of Ireland by Knight of Glin, David J. Cuffe, Nicholas K. Robinson]
p. 173. Cooke Otway, who had succeeded to Castle Otway by the time of the disturbed 1790s, when the hill country around was seethign with rumours of rebellion, showed himself more than competent to seal with any incipient insurgency.
[p. 174.] In the 1780s the Otways, like other landlords in the region, set up a volunteer corps, with Thomas Otway, nominated a Colonel, in command. …
Thomas Otway has been portrayed as a “harsh and stern landlord.”…[p. 175] Thomas Otway also seemed to have an intolerance towards the native language. In 1772 Silo Magher was fined for speaking Irish in his presence.
Thomas Otway recieved recognition as an “improving landlord” from the Dublin Society, which presented him with a silver medal in 1767…He died in 1786, and as he was childless, he was succeeded by his brother Cooke Otway [b. 1733].
p. 175. [around 1775] The secret societies, such as the Whiteboys, had grown in strength, and by the mid-1790s were given the umbrella name of the Defenders. The Orange Society had recently emerged as well, with the aim of maintaining the Protestant ascendancy, and was spreading throughout the land.
Another more significant society to be founded in that decade, the United Irishmen, sought a union of Catholics, Protestants and Dissenters under a truly democratic government of all the people of the country. It was getting strong support from the Presbyterians, or Dissenters, in the North. When the government, nervous of any form of radicalism, especially in the wake of the recent French Revolution, suppresed teh United Irish Society, it went underground to become a secret, revolutionary organisation bent on establishign a republic with military support from France. The movement became meshed with the Defenders in many parts. Military loyalism and revolutionary republicanism were heading towards a confrontation.
p. 176. Nenagh had become one of the most important United Irish centres in tipperary, its chief secret organiser being Hervey or Harvey Montmorency Morres, of the family which formerly owned Latteragh fortress and lands, who was a close friend of Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Cooke Otway reorganised the Castle Otway volunteers as the Castle Otway Yeomen Cavalry, composed now mainly of his Protestant tenantry. The corp captured a local United Irish organiser named Daniel Darcy, who was transferred to Clonmel gaol to await trial. If convicted of administering the United oath he faced execution.
…Dublin Castle declared martial law on the whole county in April 1798. ..panic set among many of the gentry in the county who quitted their residences and went into the towns. The High Sheriff then ordered every gentleman, under “such penalties as he should be empowered to inflict and the circumstances of the time justify” to return and remain at his country seat, to help restore law and order.
Cooke Otway was not the sort of “timid” landlord the High Sheriff railed against. He proved himself a ruthless rebel hunter…[he flogged a man to force a confession. Some then came forward and confessed and gave in their pikes and made oaths of allegiance and were pardoned.][some captured who were determined to have administered teh United oath were transported to Australia].
p. 178. Cooke was succeeded by his second surviving son [the first, Loftus William, rose to the rank of Lieutenant General in the British Army and then became Knight Commander of Charles III of Spain], Henry 1768-1815, who married Sarah, daughter of thomas Cave of Stanford Hall, Leicester. She became heir to the family property, and she and Henry resided at Standford Hall and in Grosvenor Square, London. This marked the beginning of the absentee landlord phase of the Templederry Otways. The Otway estate then consisted of 6,667 statute acres.
p. 179. Henry’s younger brother, Admiral Robert Waller Otway, 1770-1851, became a distinguished naval officer, and on the occasion of the coronation of William IV in 1831 was created a baronet for his services. …The baronetcy descended through this Robert Waller branch of the family, first to his eldest son, George Graham Otway and then to his brother, who lived in Brighton.
p. 180. To return to Henry, who assumed the additional name of Cave, and lived in Stanford Hall, it was through him that the Castle Otway branch of teh family continued. He was succeeded by his second son, Robert Otway Cave, who became heir to Castle Otway. Robert was a man of much more liberal bent of mind than his grandfather Cooke, or his granduncle Thomas. He embarked on a political career as a young man, serving as MP for Leicester in 1826-30, and supporting Catholic emancipation.
In 1835 he ran as a liberal candidate in the Tipperary election of 1835. As it happened there was no poll in that election and he was joined as one of the two Tipperary MPs by the well-known Richard Lalor Sheil. Despite his ascendancy background, one of Otway’s policies was opposition to the tithe system, the major and most controversial issue of the time. He was also on the side of O’Connell’s repeal of the Union campaign. He resided when convenient in Lissenhall and held his Tipperary seat until 1844… [he had no children]
Sophia Otway [his widow], although an absentee landlord, continued to take a keen interest in her Castle Otway estate and its people. She headed the Borrisoleigh Poor Relief Fund with her £30 donation in 1846, and financially helped some families emigrate to America.
…When Sophia died in 1849, Castle Otway was inherited by Vice Admiral Joselyn Otway, MP, second son of her husband’s brother, Rev Samuel Jocelyn Otway. [p. 181] In 1836, Robert Jocelyn married Anne Digby, daughter of Sir Hugh Crofton, of Mohill House, County Leitrim, and his only offspring, Frances Margaret, married William Clifford Bermingham Ruthven of Queensboro, County Galway. Through that marriage the surname became Otway-Ruthven. The eldest son and heir of William and Frances, Captain Robert Mervyn Bermingham, married Margaret, daughter of Julius Casement, of Cronroe, County Wicklow, in 1900. They had seven chidren, all of whom were given Bermingham as the last of their Christian names aparty from their eldest son, Robert Jocelyn Oliver, born 1901. He was the last Otway owner of Castle Otway. At least as far as the 19th century is concerned, the Otways were looked upon as good landlords.
Castle Otway was burnt down in the time of the Civil War, 1922. The remnant of the estate was divided following the 1926 Land Act…The other former Otway residence, Lissenhall, is also a sad ruin.”
Irish Historic Houses 