Castle Cooke (formerly Dungallane), Kilworth, Co Cork – ‘lost’
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. 64. “(Cooke-Collis/IFR) The old castle of Dungallane was acquired by Thomas Cooke, a Cork Quaker merchant, in second half of C17, and subsequently named Castle Cooke. A house was built near the old castle, …Burnt 1921.“
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.
“Late 17C or early 18C house extended at various times by the Cooke family who acquired it in the second half of the 17C. Destroyed by fire in 1921.”
The Buildings of Ireland. Cork City and County. Frank Keohane. Yale University Press: New Haven and London. 2020.
P. 13. The Tower House was the ubiquitous late medieval dwelling, found throughout the county. They were built through the C15 and C16 and into the early C17. (inland clans, including the Hurleys, McSweeneys and some McCarthys, began to build such towers such as Ballinvard (Rossmore), Togher and Ballinoroher (Clonakilty) at a comparatively late date, perhaps as a reaction to the disturbances arising during the Desmond Rebellion.). These houses typically take the form of a tall rectangular stone tower, turrets being comparatively rare in Cork, with the exception of some towers in the SW of the county, such as Kilcoe and Dunmanus. They vary greatly in size, from Monteen (Kilmalooda) at 6m x 5.6m, to Castle Richard (Killeagh) at a more typical 11.4m x 9.9m, up to Kilcrea at 15m x 11m, and Blarney at 19m x 11. [p. 14] Cork towers usually have four or five storeys, making them taller than those in Leinster and Ulster. The provision of two vautls, over the second and fourth storeys, is typical, though rare in sw Cork. Vaults can be semicircular, pointed or bluntly pointed, and were formed over wicker mats laid on timber centering, in contrast to C13.14 vaults, which were plank-centred.
The entrance is generally at ground level, unlike the raised doors used in hall houses and keeps. The wooden doors open inwards and would have been secured by a drawbar. Most of the doorways are rebated, for an outward-opening iron gate or yet, which would have been secured from the inside using iron chains. The doorway was commonly given protective cover by a box machicolation on the parapet above. Later door surrounds often incorporate a gunloop, set roughly at stomach level for maximum impact. Inside, the small lobby was covered by a murder hole in its ceiling, or by gunloops from adjoining rooms. The typical stair is a stone spiral rising in one corner of the tower. More complex arrangements are encountered in some larger towers, where straight flights rise for part of the way before giving way to spiral stairs. The quality of workmanship to these helical stairs varies; some are rather crude, but the cut stonework at Kilcrea and Castle Richard is notably refined. The spaciousness and gentle ascent of the stair at Togher, with its central drum, is unparalleled in Cork.
Each floor generally had a single principal chamber, with perhaps a smaller chamber adjoining the staircase as well as mural chambers containing garderobes or store rooms. The chamber on the top floor has often been styled the great hall, a term now disputed; instead, these rooms should perhaps be regarded as presence chambers reserved for family and guests, with a separate “hall” provided within an adjoining walled or enclosed bawn. Some principal chambers, such as those at Kilcrea, Ballinacarriga and Cloghleigh (Kilworth), have ornate rere-arches to the windows, arcades to the end walls, and finely carved corbel courses. However, windows are on the whole generally little more than narrow lancets, those on the upper floor perhaps twin-light, set in lintelled or roughly arched embrasures.
Bartizans of square or circular plan are commonly provided at diagonally opposing corners, so that they cover all four sides of the tower. They generally rest on a single tier of corbels with machicolation drops between, from while missiles or guns could be deployed. The corbels are often crudely formed, the cut-stone pyramidal corbels at Blarney a noteable exception. Occasionally bartizans are placed midway up the tower, in which case they have stone roofs, and access from the second floor.
Given the size, geographical range and ethnic differences of Cork, it is understandable that there are regional variations in tower-house construction. In north Cork is a series of notably elegant towers with rounded corners, including Cloghleigh and Cregg (Fermoy). In the SW, the use of raised entrances to the [p. 15] living quarters and a ground-level door to a separate store is common among O’Mahoney and O’Driscoll castles. An unusual feature of a number of O’Donovan castles, at Raheen (Union Hall), Glandore and Castlehaven (Castletownshend, demolished), is the provision of an inclined gable-shaped gunloop in each wall of the tower which permitted a single defender to train a musket along the full length of the wall from a second floor chamber.
Towers built during the late C16 and early C17, such as Ballintoher (Clonakilty) and Togher, differ from their predecessors in a number of ways which look forward to the fortified houses that succeeded them. They lack vaults, and instead have timber floors throughout. The omission of vaults meant that fires could no longer be set on a hearth in the middle of a room, and consequently the houses had integral fires from the outset. The absence of vaults also allowed the walls to be thinner; a Ballynamona (Shanballymore) they are 1.3m thick, in comparison to 2.3 m at Castle Cooke (Kilworth). Larger windows became the norm, while garderobe chutes were abandoned in favour of the use of closet stools or commodes. Gunloops were now an integral feature, while bartizans continued to be provided they wre often for martial display rather than use.
For much of the medieval period, urban houses were generally of timber framed construction clad in wattle and daub, and thatched. Stone constructions in towns expressed wealth and status, often in the form of a three-or four- storey tower house. Examples survive at Youghal, Kinsale and Buttevant; others are known to have existed at Cork, Mallow, Carrigtwohill, Innishannon and Cloyne.”
Irish Historic Houses 