Drumharsna Castle

In flat open farmland. In existence in 1574 when it was in the possession of 'Shane Ballagh' (Nolan 1901, 113). This National Monument consists of a rectangular tower house (9.55m E-W; 8.25m N-S) constructed of well-cut limestone blocks and mortar with dressed quoinstones. Internally the W part consists of three floors, each comprising one large room, and the E part has five floors, each comprising a small subsidiary chamber. Apart from the chamber that is accessed off the NE end of the main room on the 1st floor, all the others are accessed directly from the stairwell. Originally there was a gabled attic. The pointed arch doorway, placed slightly off-centre in the E wall, gives access to a lobby with a murder-hole above. From the lobby further doorways access the guardroom to the N, a passageway leading to the spiral stairs in the SE angle and the main ground-floor room to the W. Originally there were small single-light windows set in deeply splayed embrasures in the N, S and W walls of this room but, subsequently, a later fireplace was inserted into the window in the N wall and the window in the S wall was broken out to create a doorway. This floor has a vaulted roof and a vault also exists between the 2nd floor and the attic. In the main room on the 1st floor a splayed ogee-headed window was blocked up to accommodate the flue from the fireplace on the ground floor. The corresponding room above this on the 2nd floor was carried on a wooden floor (now gone). A rectangular embrasure is visible above an ogee-headed window in the W wall - a small opening on its S side may lead to a secret intramural passageway. There is a blocked-up fireplace with joggled voussoirs in the N wall and alcoves in the SW and NW corners; the latter alcove was blocked up when another later fireplace was installed. All the fireplaces in the building are insertions of various periods (Leask 1951, 157). There is a large rectangular recess in E the wall of this room and the opening off the stairs at slightly higher level than this floor level leads to a garderobe in the NE corner. The exit chute is visible externally on the N wall. Few traces of the parapets remain and all that survives of the attic is its W gable and chimney together with another free-standing chimney in the N wall. Both gables stood flush with the side-walls: this and differences in masonry of W gable indicate that the attic was a later addition. The wall-walk was accessed from the stairwell at SE. The latter was housed in a gabled dormer, only its S gable survives. The E gable is almost completely gone; it had a centrally placed machicolation of which only the two supporting corbels and a lintel survive. All the surviving windows are flat, circular and ogee-headed single lights. The 1922 edition of the OS 6-inch map shows a building adjoining the castle on its N side, but only the shadow line of its gable now survives. This map also suggests that the tower house stood in NW corner of a small square bawn (GA113-110007-). A series of stables and outbuildings lay to NW but these have since been cleared away.