Courtstown Castle

On a SSE-facing slope in an area of wet marshy ground. There is a good view to the NW-N-NE, but otherwise poor. This castle is not indicated on either the 1st (1839) ed. OS 6-inch map or on the 1900 revision. It is likely that it was located within a large roughly square enclosure (KK018-028002-), possibly a denuded bawn, which is indicated on these maps. It is indicated on the Down Survey (1655-6) barony map of Cranagh and on the Down Survey parish map of Tullohan (Hibernia Regnum, courtesy of Trinity College Dublin).

A castle belonging to the Grace family. Carrigan (1905, vol. 3, 500) traces the Grace connection with Tullaroan to the mid-13th century and in 1283 William le Gras exchanged all rights of his lands in Sodbury, Gloucestershire for lands in, ‘Tulachrothan [Tullaroan], Rathbolgan, Gurtuelem and Ballydine, Ireland’ (ibid. 501). In 1470, ‘Baron Oliver Grace of Tullaroan was Keeper of the Peace in the Co. Kilkenny in this year, i.e., the 19th Edward IV. He died probably about 1500. From him onward the succession of the Barons of Tullaroan, afterwards Grace’s Court, and later still Courtstown, can be traced without a break, till the overthrow of the family in 1691’ (ibid. 502). Robert Grace of Courtstown was outlawed by the Williamites in May 1691, he fought at the battle of Aughrim in July of the same year, where he was wounded and died soon after (ibid. 506). His eldest son Oliver, was in France at the time of his father’s death and he himself died only nine days later. Being absent from Ireland, Oliver was not mentioned in the Treaty of Limerick and therefore his rights to the estate were forfeit, and as a consequence his younger brother John could not legally inherit the estate from him. This, however, was kept hidden by the family until the circumstance were revealed in a malicious court case against John in 1701, whereby his claim to the inheritance was invalidated (ibid.). The property passed to the Trustees of Forteited Estates, who sold the greater part of it to the Company for making hollow sword blades (ibid.). According to Mason (1819, 600-1), ‘the castle of Courtstown and other parts of this parish, appear after passing through some intermediate and transitory possessors to have become very early in the last century the property of the ancestor of Sir Wheeler Cuffe, baronet, and are now in his possession’. When John’s son, Robert, died in 1764 without issue, the direct line of the Barons of Courtstown became extinct (ibid.). Following the sale of the castle in 1701, the new owners stripped the lead from the roof (ibid. 601 footnote).

A description of the castle is included in Mason's 1819 publication (vol. 3, 530-31), where Courtstown Castle is said to have, ‘consisted of an outward ballium or envelope, having a round tower at each angle, and also at each side of an embattled entrance to the south, which was further defended by a portcullis. Within this area or outward court, comprehending about an acre of ground, stood the body of the castle enclosing an inner court of an oblong form. The general figure of the building was polygonal. A massive quadrangular tower, or keep, projected from the centre of the south front, directly opposite to the embattled entrance of the exterior area above-mentioned. The walls of this tower were of considerable thickness, and the rests and fire places within shewed it to have originally admitted five floors. From the sides of this great square tower, two wings extended which terminated on the east and west with round towers. The east front consequently exhibited on its southern angle one of these round towers, and further northwards stood a similar tower, flanking a portal which led into the inner court formerly furnished with a portcullis. Between this last flanking round tower and a square tower at the northern angle was a spacious room or hall, of an oblong shape, occupying the entire space. The north front consisted of a high embattled wall connecting two square towers, and inclosing the inner area of that side. The western front externally corresponded with the eastern. There is said to have been a communication round the buildings of the inner court by a gallery, and, in the centre of it, the traces of a draw well are still visible, as are also the vestiges beyond the outside walls of the bowling-green, cock-pit, fish ponds, &c. Some mounds of earth to the south of the castle, called “bow-butts,” are likewise visible, and are reported by tradition to have been the place where the followers were exercised in the practice of archery’. This description, however, along with three contemporary illustrations, are suspected to be largely or entirely works of fiction and imagination, deliberately commissioned by a member of the Grace family, Sheffield Grace (1788-1850) to promote his family’s status (Manning 1997, 112-28).

The unreliable description in Mason concludes that, ‘after abundantly supplying, for above a century, materials for all the neighbouring structures, and for repairing the roads, &c. its very foundations are now beginning to be rooted up’ (ibid., 532). According to Carrigan (1905, vol. 3, 507), ‘Its roofless walls remained till about the year 1800, when they were so completely destroyed that not even a single stone of them was left over another’. Whatever the truth about the form or location of the original castle, there is no visible trace of the castle at ground level.