The Tipperary Antiquarian

Knigh Castle near Puckane in North Tipp. There is a sad bit of folklore attached to it to featuring Christmas Eve. "It is said that when the Normans were routed out of the castle, a poor man and his son went to live in it. This son took sick. One morning he was very ill, but still his father went out to work. When he returned at night his son was dead. The man was so heart-broken after him that he laid down by his side and died. This was on Christmas eve. If a person went u p to the castle on a Xmas eve you would see a man and a boy lying on the ground floor. The man is seeing crying and his son is by his side dead." http://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922134/4855176

This is a view that not many people get of Tyone Abbey as when you pass it on the Thurles Rd it seems like the small remains of a fairly basic ruined church. Another view that most people don't get is the perilous state of this very important building which is the oldest religious building in Nenagh. This arch in the main section of the abbey is in a very precarious state. Other side of the arch I happened to meet the landowner of the surrounding lands when I visited. He thought that I was from the OPW and wanted to talk to me about vital repairs that are required to make these monuments safe. Unfortunately he told me that the site is stuck in a bit of a bureaucratic limbo with a number of different bodies involved in it and none wanting to tackle the issues here. It is my own personal view that this arch will not last another winter here if we get storm winds like the last few winters. This arch is a vital structural component of the north wall of the abbey. ...

I was doing a little research on a completely different topic (looking at the Kennedy castle at Killowney Big) when I went looking at some of the older aerial photos on http://maps.osi.ie/publicviewer/ . There on the (year) 2000 aerial photo of the area was a massive crop-mark to the North-west of the castle. I presumed it must have been previously recorded but decided it was worth a look on the Sites & Monuments Record. Amazingly it had never been spotted before. It was probably just because in this particular photo it looks as if some kind of cereal crop had been sown or possibly reseeding had been carried out. I posted on an archaeology group about it and as luck would have it Colm Moriaty did a bit more research on the Irish Folklore Manuscripts and found some more information on it. Coincidentally it was me who had originally transcribed the scan but didn't link the two together!  http://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922139/4856034/5012309 "On...

It seems this saints day relates to another agricultural milestone, when the wheat seeding would be completed and winter preparations complete (for more info see there ). There is some confusion whether the killing of the cock is done on St. Martin's Eve (10th Nov) or St. Martin's Day (11th Nov). Its not a feast day that I ever recall hearing of growing up but I have something in the back of my mind about perhaps a neighbour doing it that I will check out. Here is some folklore from the Irish Folklore Commission about St. Martin's Day in Tipperary. There seems to be a good geographical spread (and I may have missed a few of them) so it must have been fairly widespread. From Portroe http://www.duchas.ie/en/cbes/4922149/4856473/5011453 "St Martin's day is on the 11th November and the day before it is St Martin's Eve. On this Eve it is the custom to kill a fowl of some kind and to spill its blood behid the door in honour of St. Martin. The blood is spil...

Some folklore about Halloween from Toor near Newport in North Tipp. "People do not practice the old customs nowadays as much as they used long ago. They got a tub of water and they put an apple floating in it. They all knelt down around the tub with their hands behind their backs. They began to dive for the apple and whoever got it ate it. They made a wooden cross and they put a lighted candle and an apple on each alternative beam. The cross was put spinning around and each t ried to grab the apple in his mouth. Very often the candle was grabbed instead of the apple. Then the grown-up unmarried girls sat around the fire. One girl took the key of the door in one hand and the spoon of melted lead in the other. When she dropped the lead through the key it made a certain figure - If it made a ship she would marry a sailor. If t made a spade she would marry a farmer. If it made a sword she would marry a soldier. After this they went out in "cabbage haggard" and p...

4000 - 2500 BC Neolithic Castletown Arra from Archaeological Excavations at Tullaheady County Tipperary by Rose Cleary & Hillary Kelleher I have wondered why I have been able to find a relatively large amount of monuments in the Castletown Arra area. One theory I have is that its relative inaccessibility prevented it from being explored and mapped by the various invaders and colonisers to the area. Really this theory is just an excuse to show off lots of old maps for the area! This map (above) from Archaeological Excavations at Tullaheady County Tipperary by Rose Cleary & Hillary Kelleher has always fascinated me. It shows the likely water levels during the Neolithic around the Castletown Arra area. From my reading of it, this area would have been a practically a large island, cut off with just one landbridge just south of Tullaheady. Castletown Arra was a half-cantred or mini Barony during the Anglo-Norman ti...

Equinox setting-sun at Lisheentyrone stone pair In March 2014 I visited this stone pair to examine whether it may be potentially be aligned to the Equinox sun-set / sun-rise. Amazingly enough when there I discovered a panel of cup-marks that had previously not been noted before. This was North Tipperary's first confirmed find of rock-art and as such opens up the area as one where more art is likely to be found. To cap off what personally was a great delight it also appears that the standing stone pair are also aligned towards the Equinox sun-set. Since then I have wondered about whether at Equinox sun-rise, that the standing stones may cast a significant shadow onto the rock-art panel itself. Astronomical alignments are beginning to be understand at rock-art panels around the world so it wouldn't be without precedent. The weather has not been conductive to checking this year but hopefully over the next few Equinox's it may become apparent.

Present remains of Church at Kilmore After watching the talk on Dermot F Gleeson by Danny Grace as part of the Gleeson Clan Gathering I felt his research on Tipperary would have a lot to offer. Looking through the papers he wrote on JSTOR the first one that caught my eye was "What was a "Cloghinkelly". Included in The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland in 1953, this short piece that he wrote intrigued me. One because I've never heard of a Cloghinkelly and two because it relates to a few early Christian sites that I have been looking at over the last few years. Remains at Latteragh He refers to some documents from the 1600s which relate to the holdings of church lands in the Diocese of Killaloe. Included within in these holdings are a Cloghinkelly. So to resurrect a question that to my knowledge hasn't been answered, just what was one of these? Gleeson quotes a line " the vicarage of Lattrah, and ye Cloninkellies of Kilmor...

The setting-sun within the passage on the Autumn Equinox 2014 Situated on Slievenamuck which makes up one half of the Glen of Aherlow is Tipperary's only confirmed passage tomb. However I do think there are at least two other passage tombs in Tipp, one on top of the Mahurslieve near Kilcommon and another on top of Slievenamon. This passage tomb is described on Archaeology.ie as follows; "On the summit of Shrough Hill, part of the Slievenamuck/Moanour mountains, with forestry encroaching to within 10m to N, E and W, forestry to W has been felled affording an extensive view of the Galty mountains and foothills below. A stone wall runs E-W along the S edge of the mound. The monument consists of a roughly circular cairn (diam. 30m; H 2m) with a small, roofless polyogonal chamber (int. dims. L 2.2m; Wth 1.2m), aligned roughly E-W, near the centre of the cairn (De Valera and Ó Nualláin 1982, 101; Ó Nualláin and Cody 1987, 76-8). The sidestones vary in height from 1.2m to 1....

I first spotted the name Catstone on one of the old 1840's maps for the Dromineer area. It of course reminded me of the famous Catstone at Uisneach in Co. Westmeath, thought to be the mythical centre of Ireland. Cats Stone marked on the old 1840's maps (Copyright NMS) It is in the townland of Shannonhall and marked as a redundant record in the SMR. Archaeology.ie describes it as follows "Situated just off crest of rise in very undulating pastureland. Large conglomerate of sedimentary rock, obviously layered with quartz pebbles. This is a large, roughly rectangular erratic (3.4m x 2.5m; H 1.3m on N side; H 2.2m on S side) resting on ground surface. Not an archaeological monument, though it is marked on 1st (1840) ed. as 'Stone' with typical depiction of pillar stone." I visited it one day a couple of years ago to see what it looked like and it does look similar to the one at Uisneach. As above there was nothing to suggest it is anything other than ...

Who was the first person to live or step foot in the County of Tipperary? Cave on Knockadoon (Lough Gur) I suppose first you have to look at where and when the first people arrived in Ireland? For a long time the earliest human settlement dated in Ireland was to what we call the Mesolithic or between 8000 - 4000 BC. Traditionally the consensus suggested that a location at Mount Sandel in County Derry showed the earliest evidence of human settlement and dates to circa 8000BC. Since then, the reexamination of a bear bone from the "Alice and Gwendoline" cave in the Burren has tentatively pushed the date back further in the Paleolithic period which basically is anything from 8000BC back to 2.6million years ago! Dr Marion Dowd & Dr Ruth Canden and their team reexamined a cut mark on the bear bone and they suggest that it must have been made by a human. Tests on the bear bone date it to approx. 10,500BC...

Today is the pattern day of St. Odhran of Latteragh. His pattern takes place today at St. Odhran's well near Latteragh in Co. Tipperary. Incorrectly I previously worte that St. Odhran was one of "The Twelve Apostles of Ireland" who went with St. Columcille to found the monastery on Iona off the coast of Scotland. I wrote about this here . I've since found some more interesting folklore about the well in the Schools Manuscipts including St Medran using his breath to light a candle, St Odhran's well springing up where a boy disappeared, the "cures" that the stones at the well can perform and of course a magic trout within the well itself. From duchas.ie "About the beginning of the sixth century two holy men Saint Odhran and Saint Medran lived at Latteragh in the parish of Templederry. Believing that it would be pleasing to God to spread his Gospel to places where it was not known, they set out to visit Saint Kieran at Kilkenny probably to get h...

Back in 2014 when I first came across the Rock Art at Lisheentyrone I thought it would be easy to find more. I surveyed the old 1840s OS maps online around the Portroe area and came across a feature called out as St. Patrick's Rock which I had never heard of up to that point. When I clicked into the description of it on Archaeology.ie it was described as "natural depressions on surface of boulder known locally as the footprint of a greyhound". I immediately thought this has to be unrecognised rock-art and visited as soon as I could. I was particularly optimistic as this rock is on the slope of a prehistoric hill-fort and there were two other unusual prehistoric features in the area ( Graves of the Leinstermen & The Capstone of the King of Leinster ). Unfortunately as you can see from the photos the depression does indeed seem to be natural. There is also some recent graffiti on the rock. Since then I found this bi...

When: 26th August 2016 - 18.30 - 19.30 Where: Meet at Portroe National School, Portroe, Nenagh, Co. Tipperary Details "Ancient rock carvings recently found in Portroe, Co. Tipperary.- First of its kind discovered in Tipperary and place of “gatherings” for over 4,000 years." This walk and talk departs from outside Portroe National School where we will walk through fields for approximately 800m to visit the megalithic complex of Lisheentyrone. Ground is typical agricultural land with uneven and muddy surfaces and so appropriate foot-wear is required. All attending the walk will be doing so at their own risk. This complex includes a pair of standing stones, a bowl barrow and since 2014 a large horizontal stone panel of cup-marks. This is the first of its kind found in the mid-west region and all of Co. Tipperary. This rock-art, a s it is known, dates to at least the bronze age or 4,000 years ago. It can be argued that it is of a similar tradition to the rock carving...

When I read the folklore associated with Kilmore in the Schools Manuscripts I knew I would have to pay it a visit sometime. How many opportunities do you get to visit a place where a man was brought back to life? Folklore says it was St. Odhran who founded the monastery at Kilmore. It also says that it was the location of raising a man from the dead Lazarus style by St. Senan. St. Senan is associated more with West Clare where he was born but he is noted as one of the "Twelve Apostles of Ireland" as was St. Odhran. You would expect binging someone back from the dead would be a miracle that couldn't be topped. However St. Senan also rid Scattery Island in the Shannon Estuary of "The Cathach" , a sea serpent like creature so it is debatable which is more impressive! When he was a boy he also performed a miracle similar to Moses's parting of the red sea where a path opened across an estuary to allow him to bring back his cows. H...