Moorstown Castle is a late 15th-century stone structure consisting of an enclosed circular keep near Clonmel, County Tipperary, Ireland.
Location
The tower house complex is located on a small road off the modern road from Clonmel to Cahir;
while visible from the main road, it is on private land. It stands on a grassed limestone hillock.
History
Moorstown Castle was built by James Keating, an ally of the
Earl of Ormond. The castle and associated lands passed, under a mortgage agreement, to Robert Cox of Bruff in 1635, and then by marriage to the Greene family. It was bought by Richard Grubb through the Landed Estates Court in 1855. As of 2011, the property remained in private ownership.
It is thought that the 17th-century Catholic priest, poet and historian
Geoffrey Keating
Geoffrey Keating (; – ) was an Irish historian. He was born in County Tipperary, Ireland, and is buried in Tubrid Graveyard in the parish of Ballylooby-Duhill. He became a Catholic priest and a poet.
Biography
It was generally believed unt ...
(Seathrún Céitinn) had family connections with the castle;
evidence suggests that he may have been the third son of James FitzEdmund Keating of Moorstown.
Structure
Moorstown consists of a circular tower house or keep, and a protective walled courtyard or
bawn
A bawn is the defensive wall surrounding an Irish tower house. It is the anglicised version of the Irish word ''bábhún'' (sometimes spelt ''badhún''), possibly meaning "cattle-stronghold" or "cattle-enclosure".See alternative traditional s ...
; the bawn was probably built first and the tower house added later. The bawn, built with limestone facing inside and outside, and a rubble core, has two defensive towers, to the southwest and northeast, and a fortified gatehouse with residential space for guards. The four-storey circular
tower house
A tower house is a particular type of stone structure, built for defensive purposes as well as habitation. Tower houses began to appear in the Middle Ages, especially in mountainous or limited access areas, to command and defend strategic points ...
found at Moorstown is unusual in Irish architecture, most Irish tower houses being square, but the form is found at several locations in County Tipperary.
There is a spiral staircase, and the main living space was on the second floor. The second floor has one larger window; otherwise most of the windows of the building are small. The third floor is believed to have been used to accommodate doves. There are musket loops for defence in multiple locations, and the building has parapets but no battlements.
Popular culture
Moorstown Castle was one of the Tipperary locations used in
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick (; July 26, 1928 – March 7, 1999) was an American filmmaker and photographer. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, Stanley Kubrick filmography, his films were nearly all adaptations of novels or sho ...
's 1975
epic film
Epic films have large scale, sweeping scope, and spectacle. The term is slightly ambiguous, sometimes designating a film genre and at other times simply big-budget films. Like epics in the classical literary sense, it is often focused on a her ...
''
Barry Lyndon
''Barry Lyndon'' is a 1975 epic historical drama film written, directed, and produced by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1844 novel '' The Luck of Barry Lyndon'' by William Makepeace Thackeray. Narrated by Michael Hordern, and starring Ryan O'N ...
''.
References
Further reading
* Wallace, Le
''Moorstown Castle - A Neglected Tower-House near Clonmel''in Tipperary Historical Journal (1989)
{{Historic Irish houses
Buildings and structures completed in the 15th century
Castles in County Tipperary