The Tipperary Antiquarian

Cashel within Mooghaun hill-fort, Co. Clare. I visited a lovely Cashel (stone ring-fort) at Mooghaun hill-fort near Newmarket on Fergus in Co. Clare recently and it got me thinking of a farmer that told me there was only one Cashel "East of the Shannon". Now this isn't true but they are fairly rare in comparison with ring-fort to the east of the shannon. For example in North Tipp there are only 28 Cashels in comparison with 794 ring-forts. This is likely that in North Tipp that building materials for a ring-fort were more readily available such as timber for a palisade that was often built on top of them. Interestingly of the 28, one of the most impressive was probably in the townland of Knigh near Puckane and when built would have looked like the Cashel at Mooghaun pictured above (it is likely it has been reconstructed at Mooghaun). Daniel Grace wrote about the Cashel at Knigh in his book "Portrait of a Parish: Monsea and Killodiernan". He says it is kn...

This area seems to have been sacred in pre-christian times From A Village by the Shannon  "Close to a well in the area of Cragg, now in the parish of Newport, lived a Celtic Druid named Ernach and his wife Cominta. They had a son and daughter whose names were Senan and Comminate. In that age people had just one name.... This druid family embraced the new religion and were converted to Christainity.Imbued with the zeal and fervour of missionaries they began to spread the new message of fatih. The daughter Comminate preached the gospel with her brother Senan and baptised people in the stream beside the well and also erected a stone altar where sacrifice was offered."  This "altar" is the bullaun stone described further down. It goes on to say that Senan went to Castleconnell to a pagan community located there and converted them. On the Clare side of the River Shannon is his holy well which is reputed to hold cures.   The 18th of March is the pattern day o...

I've been meaning to write about the burial mound at Ashleypark for a while but never got around to it. One of the main reasons probably is due to the lack of folklore associated with this mound. It was located within 40 acres of forestry which had been there for at least 200 years and didn't even feature on any of the OS maps. The area was known as "the oakwood". In 1979 the land was bought by a new owner from the Ashleypark estate and it was the new owner's intention to level the trees and use the land for tillage. It was during these works in 1980 that the chamber was discovered and an excavation begun. The excavation report notes that "there was local tradition that a king or chieftain was buried in the mound" (Manning et al, 1985, 63). In 2005 I was looking for another cairn at Whitstone a couple of miles from here and got talking to a local farmer. He told me a bit about the Ashley Park cairn as well. He told me "that the mound at Ash...