Ballylahan Castle

Strategically sited on a low but prominent rocky outcrop merging at E with rising ground, adjacent to a fording point on the River Moy which is 300m to N. It overlooks an expanse of lowlying ground at SE−W, through which a tributary stream flows NW to join the Moy.

This 13th-century Anglo-Norman castle is a National Monument in state guardianship (no. 325).

It was built in the late 1230’s/early 1240’s by Jordan de Exeter, who participated in the Anglo-Norman conquest of Connacht and thus came into possession of the cantred or barony of Gallen. De Exeter was appointed Sheriff of Connaught in the late 1240’s and led several campaigns to subdue the Gaelic clans and consolidate Anglo-Norman power in Connacht; he was killed in battle in 1258. Over the succeeding centuries, as Anglo-Norman control slipped, de Exeter’s descendants were subsumed into Gaelic culture, and the family adopting the name Mac Síurtáin (Mac Jordan, later simply Jordan).

De Exeter constructed Ballylahan castle as a stronghold on an important routeway and fording point -the townland name derives from ‘Baile-Atha-lethain’ or ‘Town of the Broad Ford’. The initial settlement saw the establishment of a town (MA061-145002-) in association with the castle, of which no trace survives, and de Exeter also founded nearby Strade Abbey (MA070-067001-).

The castle was attacked in 1316 by Fedhlim O’Conchobhair (Felim McHugh O’Connor), King of Connacht (MA061-227----). An account of this event in the Annals of Loch Cé relates that O’Conchobhair ‘went to expel the Foreigners of the West of Connacht; and Baile-Atha-lethain was burned by him, and Stephen de Exeter, and Miles Cogan, and William Prendergast, and John Staunton, were slain there, (viz., these were noble knights); and William Laighleis was slain there and a countless multitude along with them’ (Hennessy 1871). Little is known about the later history of the castle, although the structural evidence suggests it was still in use as a fortification in the 16th century.

The castle consists of a curtain wall of random rubble masonry enclosing a polygon area (c. 45m N–S; c. 40m E–W) with a substantial twin-towered gatehouse at E. The irregular, angular plan of the curtain wall more or less follows the contours of the rocky rise. The gatehouse towers have an elongated D-shaped plan, with the semicircular ends projecting beyond the exterior face of the curtain wall, and the rectangular ends extending into the garth or courtyard. The towers flanked a vaulted entrance passage, most likely furnished with a portcullis and a drawbridge over a fosse that cuts across the rising ground. Leask (1977, 72) suggests that the gatehouse was probably added in a second phase of construction c. 1260.

The fosse is now a barely discernible shallow depression (Wth c. 5m). The gatehouse is ruinous, but two-storey remnants of the twin towers still stand. A drawing attributed to Bigari c. 1770-80, shows the towers when they were still relatively intact and suggests that they may originally have been three-storeys in height (Sweetman 1999, 111: fig. 88).

The N tower retains the E half of its N wall and apsidal E end, preserving a portion of the ground floor and first floor chambers. The ground floor chamber has a pointed barrel-vaulted ceiling and is lit by two loops in large embrasures, which pierce the E wall, one facing SE and the other NE. The N wall appears to incorporate grass-grown remnants of stairs rising to a fragment of a wall face where there must originally have been a doorway into the first floor chamber. A large window pierces the E wall of the first floor chamber. A narrow ope low on the exterior wall face of the rounded E end of the N tower slants downwards through the thickness of the wall into the interior; this may have lit a basement room, possibly a strongroom for storing valuables or a prison accessed through a trapdoor in the ground floor chamber. The rebate which held the portcullis or drawbridge can still be seen on the exterior S side of the apse of the N tower.

There are scant remains of the S tower, merely a portion of its S wall, carrying a fragment of the SE angle of the first floor chamber. A massive chunk of fallen masonry lies adjacent.

The polygonal curtain wall was originally high and substantial, enhanced by the natural drop in height of the rock outcrop, but is now in poor condition, its upper courses collapsed and sections at SW−W and NE reduced to slumped sod-covered stone banks. The structural evidence indicates that the wall was rebuilt and modified over centuries of occupation and little of the original 13th-century wall remains. An intact section of the 13th century wall can be seen at W−NW. It is supported on its external face by an arrangement of tall arched buttresses, which were probably added in late 13th/early 14th-century, and there are remnants of what may have been an original projecting tower at the NW corner. The NW−N stretch of the curtain wall belongs to a later phase of rebuilding. Gun loops and a garderobe shute are visible in a right-angled projection of the wall at NW, most likely remains of a 16th-century gun turret.

The SE−S sector of the curtain wall, which has a pronounced external base batter, is also a later rebuild incorporating gunloops, one just S of the S tower, covering the entrance, and two others a few meters further S, one of which is now broken out.

The gate towers would originally have provided accommodation, but there is little trace now of the stone or timber domestic buildings would have been arrayed around the garth providing additional accommodation for the lord, his family, servants and military garrison, as well as space for kitchen, stables, workshops etc. The sunken outline (c. 17m NW–SE; 5m NE–SW) of a rectangular building abuts the inner face of the curtain wall at its SW angle, and in the N half of the garth there are grass-covered wall-footings (Wth 1.6-1.7m; H 0.4-0.5m) of a rectangular house or hall (ext. 17m E–W; 13m N–S). A large fireplace built into the inner face of curtain wall at N may be late 16th or 17th century in date, and is the last remnant of a house that abutted the wall here.