I was reading the book "Gaelic Ireland c. 1250-1650: Land, Lordship and Settlement" in which uthor Professor Elizabeth Fitzpatrick mentioned that townlands with the name Pallas may often have housed a high-status Gaelic timber fortress. This obviously got me thinking of the local townland Pallas. Prof. Fitzpatricks latest paper finally became available to view on academia.edu and in it she discusses this idea.
This is a fascinating paper and Tipperary features prominently in a number of sections of it.
The paper looks at the meaning of the name Pallas and considers whether it comes from palisade or was a borrowed term from abroad for an elite building.
It also confirms that there are townlands with the name Pallas from all four provinces of Ireland.
It concludes that they mainly occur in boundary areas and in areas where Anglo-Norman influence had waned. It says of Tipperary that "In Munster, which experienced highly variable intensities of Anglo-Norman colonisation, with reassertion of Gaelic dominance in some territories in North Tipperary, especially in the the second half of the fourteeth century". One of the diagrams shows a "Pallas" on the boundary of the half-cantred of Arra. (There are in fact six Pallas placenames in Tipperary). I would however find it hard to argue that the townland of Pallas is located on the boundary of the half-barony of Arra.
This Pallas (called up on the map in the Fitzpatricks paper) near Nenagh it concludes is likely to have been built by the Mac I Briens.
The paper says that the structure "may have been used as high-status markers in the configuration or reaffirmation of Gaelic sept boundaries" or I suppose they were built to show off how strong the Mac I Brien sept were in this area. The Anglo-Normans foothold in this area was always fairly tenuous during this period and it appears these structures were a way of showing this.
Fitzpatrick says "the surviving archaeology literature and historical geography associated with some of these place-names suggests that the place-name Pallas can distinguish a palace or mansion of a lord with recent royal ancestors and kingly pretensions. The use of the term must have carried some authority or was designed for that purpose in the changing circumstances of Gaelic elites who, while making political recoveries as lords, lost their status as kings during the later thirteenth and fourtheenth centuries."
From the old OS maps / SMR below we can see that there is a "moated site" on the townland boundary between Pallas More & Pallas Beg known as Lios Conla.
Lios Conla is described as follows on archaeology.ie:
"Situated on flat pasture in an upland area. A well-preserved moated site consisting of a raised square platform (dims. 30m x 30m) enclosed by an earth and stone bank (Wth 2m; int. H 0.8m; ext. H 2.5m) with a wide, flat-bottomed, waterlogged fosse (Wth 6m; D 2.3m) and possible traces of an outer bank. There is a causewayed entrance (Wth 2.8m) midway along the SE side. A stone wall (T 0.9m) along the SE side of the entrance may indicate a stone bridge."
Information from the locality suggests that it is currently completely overgrown and impossible to see anything other that the rough ditches of the monument.
So this description ties in with Fitzpatricks paper which says that most Pallas monuments are moated sites or raths / ring-forts.
The last thing the paper muses on is whether a timber-hall would have been built on these moated sites. Contempory poetry mentions that timber-halls were located within them but to date no excavations have been carried out at any of these sites to confirm whether this was so or whether poetic license may have been at play.
It is interesting to see on the old OS maps that just to the east of Lios Conla is a tree known as "Shantom Bush". It is unusual for a single tree to be recorded on the old OS maps and so it must have been of some importance. I would speculate that it may have had something to do with royal inauguration.
Rev. John Gleeson's book "The History of Ely O'Carroll Territory" deals with the area and the O'Briens in detail.
One interesting reference on pg 502 (which come from the AFM & AC) is to "1545AD - "McBrien Ara (Conla) slain in his own castle by some prisoners". Did that refer to Lios Conla or an individual named Conla whom the castle may have been called after?
He does not seem to list the moated site among the features called out in the OS letters from the 1840s (Unless it is Burgess Fort which it describes as circular?).
However a Conla doesn't appear in the pedigree of the O'Briens featured later in the chapter.
So to conclude it appears that the Mac I Briens built a large square earthen banked fort on the boundary of Pallas More & Pallas Beg townlands as a way to show that they were Chiefs of the area and that Anglo-Norman rule was very far away. This moated site may have had a timber hall within it.
