Fanningstown Castle

Fanningstown (Baile an Fhainínigh/the town of An Fainíneach/Fanning) Castle consists of a tower house and bawn (LI021-047001-) which was extended in the 18th and 19th centuries and in recent times was converted into a four-star self-catering accommodation. Castle and bawn stands in the W quadrant of the townland, in the parish of Adare which lies in the barony of Coshma. Old Deer Park 780m to E of castle as shown on the 1840 ed. OSi 6-inch map. Caherass Church (LI021-090----) 1.5km to S and Castleroberts (LI021-037----) 1.5km to W.

Westropp (1906-7, 164-5) recorded the following details about Fanningstown Castle and bawn; ‘Not to be confused with Fanningstown in Fedamore (infra, No. 203). It may be the Ballyatheney or Ballyatneny (i.e. Bally-anhiny) held with Adare in 1285 by Maur [ice]., father of Ger[ald]. F[itz]. Maur[ice]. (C.S.P.L). 1567 Tithes of Bally fenninge granted to Sir Warham St. Leger (Fi[ant]. 1143), and in 1592: granted to Sir H. Wallop (Fi[ant]. 5964). 1655 Fanningstown C[astle]. and bawne held by Edm[und]. Fanning (C.S., xxiv., p. 34). Fabric - The peel tower is fairly perfect, but embodied in modern buildings’. No castle is depicted in this townland on the 17th century Down Survey map of Coshma barony (Hib. Reg.) or the parish map of Ballingaddy (NLI, Ms. 718). The 1654-56 Civil Survey of Limerick recorded that the deceased Edmund Fanning of Fanningstown listed as an ‘Irish Papist’ was in possession of ‘one ploweland with a castle, bawne, a t[h]atch[ed] house, and an orchard thereuppon’ (Simington 1938, 143).

Multi-period castle described by the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage (NIAH) as a; ‘Detached former country house, built c. 1810, built within the bawn of a medieval castle. Comprising crenellated single-bay three-storey block with crenellated single-bay two-storey block to west, having two-bay single-storey extension to west, lean-to and crenellated four-stage round-tower to rear (north) elevation. Nine-bay two-storey block perpendicular to rear. Pitched slate roofs with red brick chimneystacks. Rubble limestone walls. Limestone machicolations to roofline and guarderobe-like projection having blind cross loops to main block front (south) elevation. Rubble limestone boundary walls to south and west incorporating tower house to west. Rubble limestone walled garden to south-west, having round-headed carriage arch with red brick voussoirs. Fanningstown Castle, retains much of its original grandeur as can be seen in the impressive crenellated tower and round tower. The substantial nineteenth-century additions were built by P. Nagle of Cork. The complex form is indicative of various building phases in its past and the house incorporates earlier building fabric to the interior.’ (www.buildingsofireland.ie; NIAH Reg. No. 21902126).

The castle and bawn are described on the castle website as following; ‘There was a castle at Fanningstown by 1285. It is difficult to date the remaining castle ruins which consist of a small, almost square chamber without upper floors or roof, and a round staircase tower which, pierced with arrow-slit windows, rises about three floors, but from which the staircase and roof have been removed. There is the remains of a bartizan (a turret corbelled out from the wall on cut stone corbels, used for defence) on the west corner. This castle was incorporated into one corner of a battlemented bawn wall which enclosed a large courtyard. It is possible that the other three corners were given towers or the external appearance of towers. There is one of the latter on the NE corner, surmounted by double battlements which are typical of Irish medieval castellated architecture. It could be a nineteenth-century addition, like the one on the NE corner which was incorporated into the new house, of which more later. A seventeenth-century description of Fanningstown draws attention to a single plowland, a thatched house, and an orchard. These could have sustained a steward charged with the upkeep of the castle. They might well have lain safely within the bawn walls, though it is not impossible that the present extensive walled orchard adjacent to the bawn could have had a seventeenth-century or earlier origin. At Fanningstown part of the bawn wall was taken down and a new house erected. The castle was left to one side as a ruin. Nothing of this new house now remains. It was, however, still in existence when the Ordnance Survey cartographers visited in 1840, and from their map it is possible to see that the new house faced the old courtyard with a long impressive façade and a bow-fronted entrance. The orchard was to the rear. An eighteenth-century cut stone opening can be seen in the eastern wall. Fanningstown was now entered by a road from the east which ran off the Patrickswell-Croom Road, marked by a gate lodge which still stands’ (https://www.fanningstowncastle.com/history).

Salter (2004, 81) described the castle as; 'Towers about 6m square survive at the SW and SE corners of a bawn [LI021-047001-] now occupied by farm buildings. Each had a third storey level bartizan on the outermost corner, and a spiral stair in a turret projecting from the corner within the bawn. The SE tower remains complete as part of a farmhouse, but only the stair turret and bartizan corbels remain of the upper part of the SW tower'.