Holdensrath Castle

On top of a low hill with a gentle S-facing slope, incorporated in the NW angle of a farmyard, with farm buildings adjoining the external E and S walls. There are good views from NW-E-S. Carrigan (1905, vol. 3, 218), refers to an Inquisition hold on the 21st of August 1619 when, ‘Helias Shee [brother of Sir Richard Shee], late of the city of Kilkenny, was seised in fee, during his lifetime….of one castle, and one-third of the land and holding of Folingrath otherwise Fowlingrath [now Holdensrath]’. He further states that, ‘George Shee, son of Helias, survived down to 1653, when, as an Irish Paist, he forfeited the castles and lands of Clonmoran, Holdensrath and Sholdhamrath, now Shellumsrath, and all his other possessions. His property was divided between the Cromwellians, Overington Blunden and Captain Thomas Evans’ (ibid.). The castle is depicted on the Down Survey (1655-6) barony map of 'The Liberties of the City of Kilkenny' and on the parish map of the 'St Patrick's Parish' (Hibernia Regnum, courtesy of Trinity College Dublin).

A two-storey rectangular tower house (ext. dims. 11.5m E-W x 7.7m N-S; wall T 1.5m) consisting of a ground floor with a windowless loft beneath a barrel vault and a floor above the vault. Only the base of the parapet survives. Constructed of roughly coursed limestone rubble, with cut blocks used as quoin stones. There is a low base-batter (H 0.75m) at the N and SW. Only the N and W walls remain to full height, with short returns of the E and S walls. The SE angle is missing, including half of the S wall and almost all of the E wall. The E end of the barrel vault has collapsed and a concrete structure inserted to support the surviving masonry. The ground floor has been used to house animals, with partition erected to facilitate this.

An illustration of this castle dated 1799 and attributed to Austin Cooper provides an external view of the S and E faces, with a round-arched doorway at the E end of the S wall and the remains of a machicolation above it at parapet level (Manning 1998, 131, plate 5). A single storey thatched outbuilding runs E-W from the E face and another N-S from the W end of the S face. Access to the upper level was via a mural stair in the E wall (Wth 0.85m), the original steps of which have been largely replaced by concrete steps. At ground-floor level there is a large pointed recess in the E wall and a modified window within a pointed embrasure flanking a small square ope in the N end of the W wall. Fenestration at first-floor level consists of a partially collapsed window in the N wall, within a pointed arched embrasure and a small rectangular light within a pointed arched embrasure off-centre in W wall. Drainage holes are visible near the top of the walls, indicating the base of the wall-walk.