Mallow Castle, Mallow, Co Cork  – ruin  

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. 199. “(Jephson/IFR) The old Desmond castle at Mallow was rebuilt towards the end of C16 by Sir Thomas Norreys, Lord President of Munster – a son of Elizabeth I’s life-long friend, Lord Norreys of Rycote – as what was described at the time as “a goodly, strong and sumptuous house”; a three storey gabled oblong with polygonal turrets and projections; it has large Elizabethan mullioned windows, yet was defensible; indeed, it was strong enough to hold out against the Confederates under Lord Mountgarret 1642. By the that time it was the seat of Major Gen William Jephson, whose mother, Elizabeth – a god-daughter of the old Queen – was the daughter and heiress of Sir Thomas Norreys. It was, however, captured by Lord Castlehaven 1645 and badly damaged; and in 1689 it was burnt by order of King James. Its ruin still stands, facing the present house, which is long, low and many-gabled, of rough-hewn stone and with the air of an English manor house of the Tudor or early-Stuart period. One end of it actually dates from C16, being Sir Thomas Norreys’s stables, to which the family retreated after the burning of the Elizabethan house. Various addtions were made during C18, and in 1837 the house was enlarged and rebuilt by Sir Denham Jephson-Norreys, MP, 1^st (and last) Bt, who is said to have acted as his own architect, though he appears to have enlisted the help of Edward Blore. Sir Denham – or his architect – kept to the scale and simplicity of the old stable range, and produced what is, for its day, a remarkably convincing reproduction of vernacular late C16 or early C17 architecture; with none of the pretentions “Baronial” or “Elizabethan” features which most early-Victorians could not resist. The three storey battlemented tower in the centre of the long front is as unassuming as the gabled and mullioned ranges on either side of it. Sir Denham is also said to have designed the great Elizabethan staircase with its finials, and the carved oak chimneypieces and overmantels in the drawing room and dining room, which were made by his estate carpenter. The drawing room and dining room, which open into each other, are panelled from floor to ceiling in elm. The house was enlarged ca 1954 by late Brig and Mrs Maurice Jephson, who added the present entrance front at right angles to the old building. This was part of Sir Denham Jephson-Norrys’s plan, though he never carried it out’ but he had the stonework cut and ready, which was used a century later. The new wings contains a delightful upstairs library with a deep oriel overlooking the River Blackwater and the park, in which there is a herd of white deer, said to be descended from two white harts which Elizabeth I gave to her god-child, Elizabeth Norreys. Mallow Castle was sold 1985.” 

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.”