Ballyhack Castle

The church of Balishauc was confirmed to the Knights Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem in 1212, and this name has been mistakenly interpreted as Ballyhack (Hore 1900-11, vol. 3, 241-50; Moore 1996, 168, No. 1503), but Balishauc is now identified as Ballyhoge parish in Shelmaliere and Bantry baronies (Colfer 2002, 202-05). Ballyhack was within the Cistercian estate of Dunbrody Abbey (WX039-030001-) and would have been built in the 15th century to protect its fishing community and the ferry with Passage East. At the Suppression in 1541 Dunbrody abbey held nine tenements at Ballyhack (Hore 1900-11, vol. 3, 126). The tower house is a National Monument (Harbison 1970, 245), and is open to the public from 22 June to 28 Aug. See this website accessed on 13 June 2013: http://www.heritageireland.ie/en/ballyhackcastle/

The tower house is located in a short steep-sided valley (L c. 400m NE-SW) that opens out to the Barrow/Nore/Suir estuary at a narrow point opposite Passage East (WA018-009----), Co. Waterford, which is c. 700m to the S. The dressed stone throughout is Old Red Sandstone conglomerate. This is a tower house (ext. dims. 10.75m NW-SE; 9.85m NE-SW) of five storeys surviving to the wall walk with good quoins and evidence of a base-batter. A rectangular doorway, protected by machicolation at the fourth floor, a yett, and a murder hole in the lobby, is towards the W end of the SW wall. The lobby leads through a pointed doorway (Wth 1.6m) to the ground floor (int. dims 6m NW-SE; 4.77m NE-SW), which has a slit window in an embrasure on every wall except the SE.

The mural stairs in the SW wall lead to a passage in the SE wall. A lintelled doorway from the centre of the passage leads to the first floor under the NW-SE vault, which has one window in the NW wall. The floor is supported on corbels in the NE and SW walls, and there is a garderobe at the N angle which is accessed by a passage in the NE wall. Mid seventeenth-century pottery was found in the pit of this garderobe, indicating a date for the abandonment of the castle (Fanning 1975). There is an oubliette or hidden chamber in the masonry of the vault in the NE wall, entered from the floor above, but this is now blocked. The stairs rise in the SE wall where a pointed doorway at the E angle provides access to the second floor over the vault. This floor has a large destroyed window with seats in the SW wall placed over the main entrance doorway, which also commands the murder-hole over the lobby. This wall has a fireplace and light to the E of the window with seats. There is a rectangular window with seats in the NW wall and two chambers in the NE wall, one a garderobe at the N angle, the other with blocked access to the oubliette. There is a single light in the SE wall. The ceilings of the second to fifth floors are supported on corbels in the NE and SW walls.

A newel stairs at the E angle leads to the third and fourth floors, but it is now blocked. A pointed doorway leads from the stairs to the third floor, which has an ope with a pointed rear-arch, a destroyed window, a fireplace, and a two-light ogee-headed window in the SW wall. There is a single ogee-headed window in the NW wall. There are three chambers, in the thickness of the NE wall. The most northerly is a garderobe, the central may be a sacristy, and the E chamber is a chapel with a piscina, aumbry, and altar shelf. The chapel is open to the rest of the floor, and has a rounded arch over it, but it is now inaccessible. The fourth floor commands the machicolation over the main entrance in the SW wall and there are two two-light windows in this wall, one with seats and ogee-headed lights. There are single-light ogee-headed windows in the NW and NE walls. This floor also has a small chamber at the E angle, while the destroyed mural stairs continue in the SE wall to emerge on the destroyed battlements at the S angle where the corbels of a machicolation survive.

Archaeological monitoring (03E1630) immediately outside the entrance doorway identified the foundations of a cottage and its drains that could be dated to the 17th or 18th century through finds of Staffordshire slipware, clay-pipe fragments and glass (Reid 2006).

This is a National Monument in state ownership: No. 516.