Brian Boru's Wine Cellar

The overgrown hall-house.

This building just outside Ballina is recorded in the SMR as a Castle - Hall House.

It is described as follows:

"Situated on high ground overlooking a deep ravine and nearby church (TN025-016----) to the S. The poorly preserved remains of a small rectangular building surviving to first-floor level only, built with roughly coursed sandstone rubble of cyclopean appearance. The building consists of a narrow small ground-floor chamber (int. dims. 6.65m N-S; 3.05m E-W; Wall T 2m) accessed from a segmental-arched doorway situated in the centre of the E wall. This appears to be an insertion and may belong a later phase of construction. The ground floor had a wooden ceiling carried in the thickness of the wall with a destroyed flat-headed window in the centre of the W wall which replaced an earlier window. At first-floor level there is a single-light
round-arched window in the N wall (Fitzpatrick 1985, vol. 3, 75-86) which is now obscured by ivy growth. At the E end of the extant S wall there is the remains of a garderobe chute. Possible stairs are visible at the E end of the S wall which gave access to an E chamber (now destroyed). There was no cut stone used in the fabric of the building. It is unclear from the surviving evidence and the dense cover of ivy if this building survives fully intact or whether only the W half of the castle survives. There is possible evidence for a bawn wall extending E from the SE angle of the castle.
In 2001 archaeological testing by Brian Hodkinson on a proposed house site beside the Ballina-Birdhill road and is overlooked by the ruins of Cloghaneena castle, no archaeological features were uncovered (Bennett 2003, 377). Testing carried out under licence No. 01E0864."

When I visited recently I would say the ivy and scrub had actually died back a lot more than when this description was recorded.

You can clearly make out the thick walls.

According to local tradition this hall-house was Brian Boru's wine cellar, it is known as Cloghanenna or Cloch an Fhíon which is supposed to mean Stone of the Wine. It is likely that the structure dates to later than Brian Boru's time. The annals record the Vikings of Limerick giving vast quantities of wine as tribute to Brian Boru. (From Sliabh Aughty "Brian Boru Sites in Killaloe" by Una Kierse.

Two interesting features that I noticed while there were two "worked" stones in the building fabric.

This one is possibly a mill-stone of some kind and approximately 500mm in diameter.

I also noticed this stone with a hole bored into it.

And another photo of the outside of it from a different angle.

It is a pity to see it in such poor condition these days, especially considering its link to the whole Brian Boru "mythos".

I think the location on the Tipperary side of the Shannon also helps show that Brian Boru & the O'Briens domain stretched to both sides of the Shannon at various different periods.