Charles Vallancey

Cashels in Kerry 4: Staigue

Our last, and most magnificent, cashel in this series is Staigue. Majestic, imposing and mysterious, it sits at the head of a long valley with views down to the sea, almost 4kms away.

Staigue is the one that has never been excavated, and so it is the one that we can project our own speculations on regarding its age, its function, and its association with the fairies.

The thing that distinguishes Staigue from the other Cashels in Kerry I have written about so far is its sheer size. It’s what provokes awe. The first to write about it, in 1821, was the then-landowner F C Bland, who said:

When the appearance of the country, which is barren and uninviting, is considered, it must create surprise, what could have been the inducement to erect such a structure in such a place; and, when the  traveller, whose curiosity has supported him through a long journey, the latter part of which for ten or twelve miles has been through a wild, uncultivated, though not an uninteresting country, first approaches it, he experiences a sensation of disappointment. For it stands a single object on a hill, and from its figure (being round) producing but little effect of light and shade; and, having no familiar object by which to measure its magnitude, and its importance being rather diminished by the extent and desolation of the surrounding scenery, he attaches a meaner opinion to it than it deserves. But when he enters it, he is struck with astonishment; and his imagination almost instantly transports him to distant ages lost in remote antiquity. He vainly endeavours to figure, in his “mind’s eye,” the beings who erected it, their manners, habits, and costume; until, “lost and bewildered in the fruitless search,” his mind returns to sober investigation, again to lapse into conjecture. This effect is not lost by familiarity:—I have visited it a hundred times, and have always experienced the same sensation.

Description of a remarkable Building, on the north side of Kenmare river commonly called Staigue Fort. Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, Vol XIV, Dublin, 1825

I know how he felt. Bland did a series of measurements and drawings of the fort, and they provide a charming antiquarian look at how it was 200 years ago, when it had been in use as a cattle pound. That’s one of his drawing at the head of this post. Here’s another.

But his account is more than charming – it provides an indication of how the fort looked at that time (even though the drawings are not exactly accurate). This is important because we need to know what interventions have been made over the years to the fort – interventions that can significantly altar the profile and appearance of the fort, as we have seen in the other three. For example, he referred to an ‘eve stone’ a term that is unfamiliar to me, and said:

In one part, where the wall is perfect, it is surmounted  by a projecting eve stone, which, when complete, must have added greatly to the effect of the whole. This is indeed the only attempt at ornament in the entire building.

His own drawing do not show any special feature and whatever it was, no really obvious eve stone has survived the two centuries since he wrote this account. However, the National Monuments record does state The rampart stands to a maximum external height of 5.7m at N, where both Bland and Dunraven noted a number of coping stones projecting slightly over its inner wall-face (1825, 18-19; 1875, 24). Two of these remain in situ, and average 1m x .4m x .08m thick. Perhaps I need to go back and take a closer look.

The good news is that, of all the cashels we have examined so far in this series, Staigue seems to have remained most true to its original state. That is not to say it is identical to how it was 200 years ago – it has been tidied and stabilised, although when and by whom remains uncertain. There is a suggestion that Bland himself employed local workmen to do some restoration work, and another that the OPW did some in the 19th century. 

While no records of these works remain, overall, the fort looks similar now to the older images we have of it. Historic edifices like Staigue cannot be left to crumble if significant numbers of people are visiting it. Sooner or later, as people climb on the walls, knocking off stones, it will deteriorate, creating a safety hazard and a dangerous situation for the monument itself. 

The trick is to intervene as sensitively as possible while still providing safe access and I would say that this has been done well at Staigue, although readers may want to weigh on on this question. The photos above and below are from the Irish Tourist Board collection (used in compliance with their Creative Commons License) – they amply demonstrate that climbing on the walls was as irresistible in 1964 as it is now. The ditch around the fort is also quite obvious in the aerial photo.

In essence, Staigue is similar to the other Cashels, with massive walls, two internal rooms or ‘cells’ in the walls, an entrance through the walls on the south side, and sets of stairs giving access to the top of the walls.

The stairs – the Irish word staighre (pronounced sty-rah) may have given the cashel its name – are the most striking feature. Commonly referred to a X-pattern, the first set lead up to a flat ‘landing’ from where the next set take off in both directions. You can see this really well in this 3D model of Staigue done by The Discovery Program. The image below is a still from the model – click here to go to it – it’s fun to manipulate it for yourself.

The entrance, surmounted by not one but two massive lintels, leads through the south wall, with a slightly inclined profile. The walls is lowest at this point. 

The two mural chambers are to the left of the entrance and opposite it. Their use is unclear, but they may have functioned, like souterrains, as cold storage for food.

We do not know what buildings may have been inside the fort, although, as we saw in the other three, it was common for these cashels to have houses, whether for dwelling or for ceremonial use (as at Cahergal) or both. It is highly likely that any future excavation of Staigue would reveal similar constructions. The OPW sign (extract below) makes that assumption and says The fort was the home of the chieftain’s family, guards and servants, and would have been full of houses, out-buildings, and possibly tents or other temporary structures.

You remember our old friend General Vallancey from Beranger’s West Cork? In that post I told you that he was an antiquarian of the fanciful sort – forever banging on about druids and Chaldeans and coming up with far-fetched theories. In fact he pronounced Staigue to be a Phoenician amphitheatre! Perhaps Bland’s romantic illustration, below, put him in mind of such an interpretation.

Westropp, one of whose main activities was bringing common sense to antiquarian discourse, in a series on forts written between 1896 and 1901, situated Staigue very much in line with other stone forts on the Western seaboard. The photograph below is from that series. He acknowledges the defensive nature of the huge walls, but declined to use what he saw as the simplistic term “fortress”.

As for their use as cattle pens (as Bland had suggested), he says:

It was, however, not unusual to keep the cattle in the residential fort; we find this in legend, as in the case of the cattle of Iuchna the curly-haired, and in that story, so often quoted, of the three forts of Ventry. What is stronger evidence is that the ancient laws of Ireland made provision for seizing cattle kept in forts, and even for keeping them impounded therein on dark nights. That this extended to later times we have seen in the fort-names Cahernagree, Lisnagry, &c., and perhaps even in the “pounds” of Dartmoor and the local name for Staigue fort “Pounda-na-Staigue.”


The Ancient Forts of Ireland: Being a Contribution towards Our Knowledge of Their Types, Affinities, and Structural Features. (Plates LII. to LIX.). Author(s): Thomas Johnson Westropp Source: The Transactions of the Royal Irish Academy, 1896/1901, Vol. 31 (1896/1901)

Westropp saw these forts as having multiple uses, much as Con Manning did more recently – places of assembly, of ceremony, and, if a dwelling, that of a high status individual. Indeed the command of resources it would have taken to build Staigue is staggering. The fact that it was surrounded by an outside ditch (no longer very obvious) might also add to its indentification as defensive. The photo below is from a 1950 piece by Angus Graham (Some Illustrated Notes from Kerry, in
The Journal of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland, Vol. 81, No. 2 (1951), pp. 139-145)

We have seen that the three other Kerry Cashels have been dated to the Early Medieval and Medieval period: Leacanabuaile to the 9th and 10th centuries, Cahergal in use between the 7th and 9th centuries and again during the 11th and 14th, and Loher from 400 to 1600. It is puzzling therefore, that the OPW sign at the fort assigns a likely date of the early centuries AD before Christianity came to Ireland. In other words, the Iron Age. This assertion, of an Iron Age date, is repeated in various online sources about Staigue (including an even more vaguely worded reference to “during the Celtic Period.”). There is no evidence that Staigue was built significantly earlier than the other Kerry Cashels. In all likelihood, it belongs in the same medieval tradition of cashel-building.

If you get to Kerry, go visit all four of these remarkable testaments to our past. You will find yourself wondering at the context in which they were built, and the complex and highly stratified society in which resources could be marshalled to build something that would serve to remind all who saw it, who’s in charge here!

All four posts in this series can be found here.

Beranger’s West Cork?

Who was Gabriel Beranger and why was his work so important? And why have I added a question mark? All will be revealed.

Timoleague Castle, abbey and town, co[unty] of Cork (RIA MS 3 C 30/68)

While we have several Beranger watercolours of Cork subjects, only two, Timoleague (above) and Castlehaven, are from West Cork*. They are the earliest painted depictions of each place, and as such represent incredibly significant records. Each one dates between 1770 and 1799. The description of the watercolour above says: A scenic view of Timoleague Castle, abbey, surrounding town and river [Argideen] Co. Cork. Two men, hauling a boat along the bay are depicted in the foreground of drawing.

The Abbey (actually a Franciscan Friary) is easily recognisable, but the castle is nowadays hidden behind other buildings. There is no real sign of a ‘town.’

Here’s what it looks like nowadays.

There’s a second drawing of Timoleague, this time done from a different perspective and focussing on the Castle, which is surrounded by an extensive bawn wall.

Now on to the watercolour of Castlehaven. It’s beautiful, I think. Importantly, it shows the tower house as complete, whereas it is nowadays only a stub, covered in ivy and brambles.

The church in Castlehaven graveyard is shown as a house rather than a church. The small addition to the left end of it may have been, according to Conor O’Buachaille of Gormú, a guardhouse, a feature of graveyards from the grave-robbing era.

Gabriel Beranger , born in around 1729, was from a Dutch Huguenot background, but settled in Ireland in his early 20s. He was a printer and watercolourist who spent a lot of time travelling around Ireland and recording what he saw – often landscapes, but particularly anything of antiquarian interest. Wealthy patrons employed him for that purpose, since antiquarian pursuits were popular among the gentry. Helpfully, he kept notes along the way in a journal. The journal, Beranger’s sketchbooks and some of the watercolours came into the possession of Sir William Wilde about a hundred years after Beranger’s death, and we are indebted to Wilde for most of what we now know about the artist. Wilde wrote a series of posts based on this material for the The Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, now the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland. Wilde took up a lot of space with his own theories about the antiquities themselves (he didn’t believe that round towers could have been bell towers, for example) but did manage to squeeze in some biographical and professional data about Beranger.

The good old Dutchman was spare in person, of middle height, his natural hair powdered and gathered into a queue; he had a sharp, well-cut brow and good bushy eyebrows, divided by the special artistic indentation; a clear, observant, square-ended nose, that sniffed humbug and took in fun; clear, quick, brown eyes; a well-cut, playful, dramatic mouth, eloquent and witty; not a powerful, but a chin quite congruous with the face. Well shaven, no shirt to be seen, but his neck surrounded with a voluminous neckcloth, fringed at the ends, a drab, rather Quaker-cut coat and vest for household purposes, and when out on sketching excursions he had on a long scarlet frock coat, yellow breeches, top boots, a three-cocked hat, and held in his hand a tall staff and a measuring tape. Like Woverman’s white horse or Petrie’s red woman, he frequently introduced himself in this remarkable but at the time not uncommon costume into his pictures. He was a keen observer of nature, men, and manners, and appeared to relish Irish fun, as indeed his dramatic cast of countenance, shown in the very good crayon drawing made by himself when about middle life, would indicate, and of which an admirable lithograph is appended to this biography.


Memoir of Gabriel Beranger, and His Labours in the Cause of Irish Art, Literature, and Antiquities,
from 1760 to 1780, with Illustrations
W. R. Wilde
The Journal of the Royal Historical and Archaeological Association of Ireland, Fourth Series, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1870),
https://www.jstor.org/stable/25506575

Of his art, this is what Wilde has to say:

He was a most painstaking artist, and a faithful delineator of antiquarian remains. He is said to have been self-taught, and this may account for the hardness of some of his drawings; yet no one of his time could draw an old castle, a cromlech, or a round tower better ; but his extended landscapes were not good, and more resemble plans than pictures. He particularly failed in trees and green fields. Had his observations and descriptions, and his drawings of Irish scenery and antiquities, been published eighty or ninety years ago, they would have caused archaeological study to progress in this country, and perhaps forestalled the opinions of subsequent writers.

Ditto

Then comes the part that is most pertinent to West Cork:

To each volume there is, at the commencement, a copious Alphabetical Index, followed by an ” Advertisement,” stating that ” the castles which com pose this collection I designed on the spot, except the following, which were communicated to me by various gentle men here undernamed, whose kindness I acknowledge with thanks,” &c. From this it would appear that besides his own drawings he obtained, with a view to publication, several others which I am inclined to think he copied with his own hand for the purposes of his work. Among the names of persons who contributed sketches, we find that of Colonel Charles Vallancey as the most conspicuous.

Ditto

Wilde (below, as a young man) died before he could finish his series on Beranger and the last piece was written by Lady Wilde, who occupied most of it with a paean of praise to her husband. William and Jane were at the forefront of the literary of antiquarian movements of their day, and are also, of course, remembered as the parents of Oscar.

There is, as it turns out, no record of Beranger having been in West Cork, although we know he took extended painting trips to several counties – including Wicklow (see my post Antiquarians loved Glendalough) and Sligo (Robert’s Discovering Carrowmore). What we are sure about is that General Charles Vallancey was here, first to manage the defence of southwest Ireland against the threat of French invasion, and then to make a series of grand plans to link West Cork to the rest of Ireland and to the world! I hope to write more of this in a future post.

So – whose West Cork is this – Beranger’s or Vallancey? The answer is – both. In the Digital Repository, both are acknowledged as originators. Vallancey was a man of enormous energy and drive. He wrote several volumes of his Collectanea de rebus hibernicis, (available at the Internet Archive) and required illustrations for them – hence his patronage of Beranger, and others. The illustration above is from one of his Collectanea and so he must have wished himself to be depicted this way, as benign and intellectual. Love those little glasses! He was a scholar of Irish – one of the first to raise its profile as an ancient and beautiful language – and an antiquarian of the fanciful sort – forever banging on about druids and Chaldeans and coming up with far-fetched theories. Unfortunately, we don’t have Vallancey’s originals, so we can’t compare the accuracy of the drawings. While we know that Beranger’s reputation was for painstaking exactness, we don’t have the same information about Vallancey’s. To me, comparing it to places Beranger drew on the spot, the rendition of the castles looks a little approximate, especially the fenestration. Nevertheless, as illustrations of two places in eighteenth century West Cork, these watercolours are priceless.

One last detail and quote. Wilde was able to describe Beranger’s dress – that’s because he often put himself in the frame, to add human scale and interest. In his lively piece Beranger’s painted people – himself and others, Peter Harbison gives several examples. But we have our own, from the Timoleague Castle painting. There he is, in his long scarlet frock coat, yellow breeches, top boots, a three-cocked hat, and held in his hand a tall staff and a measuring tape. (Well, more or less.)

Do you know Timoleague and/or Castlehaven well? Can you add to the commentary on those painting? I’d love to have any comments you might have.

*I am grateful to the Digital Repository of Ireland, under whose Creative Commons License I have used these illustrations. See here for more of their Beranger collection.

Castlehaven – The Haven

The word ‘haven’ is said to have a Norse origin: hǫfn. This translates simply as ‘harbour’. Does this mean that the Vikings visited West Cork and gave Castlehaven its name? Dictionary definitions include ‘a safe haven in times of trouble’ – refuge, retreat, shelter, sanctuary, asylum . . . The word conjures up something a little magical, and our exploration last week of the secretive valley that leads inland from Castlehaven – at the southern end of a significant West Cork cove – was certainly an enchanting experience. We traversed it on the greenest of days at the arrival of spring:

The header is a nineteenth century engraving, and shows a possibly idealised view looking across The Haven, towards the open waters of the Atlantic. In the foreground is the castle of Raheen, or Rathin. Castlehaven itself is at the far end, and the old tower house there – now all but vanished into the lush undergrowth – was strategically important, particularly during the Nine Years’ War between Gaelic Irish lords and the English. Spain also took an opportunistic interest in intervening in matters between Ireland and England. There are many accounts of the skirmish that occurred here on 6 December 1601, all of them varying to such a degree that we can have no real idea, even, of who was victorious! I like this version, penned by a contributor to the Duchas Schools Folklore Collection. It’s part of an extensive essay about the history of the area, which we will revisit in due course:

. . . Beside the Cemetery at Castlehaven stood, about ten years ago, the ruins of Castlehaven Castle, described by Don O’Sullivan in connection with the war of O’Neill & O’Donnell. “Porto Castello”, as it is called by O’Sullivan, played a very important part in connection with the Battle of Kinsale. Both O’Sullivan & Carew give accounts of a battle fought in the harbour, and while the former claims that Admiral Levison and his ships were driven off with loss of some vessels at the harbour’s mouth, Carew claims victory for the British fleet. Local tradition says that inside Reen Point, on the eastern side of the harbour lies a Spanish Vessel laden with gold, but that misfortune is sure to follow anyone who seeks the treasure. Castlehaven Castle was fortified by a combined garrison of Spanish and Irish and withstood the assault of Admiral Levison of the British fleet. The ruins of this castle were in a fair state of preservation about fifteen years ago, but the lower portion of the wall showed signs of weakness, and the great pity was, that nothing was done to prevent the collapse of the entire ruin a few years later. It is ‘said’ that stones had been removed for road metalling many years ago and this vandalism could certainly bring about the unfortunate collapse which only left only a confused pile of stones . . .


Seán Ó Donnabháin – Teacher, Baile an Chaisleáin School, Castletownshend 1936
Upper – a view of the now-vanished tower of Glenbarrahane Castle at the entrance to the Haven by Cork antiquarian John Windele, 1801 – 1865 (courtesy National Library of Ireland) and lower – the vestigial stone walls that remain today beside the grey sands of Castlehaven

Among our inherited collection of West Cork books in the library at Nead an Iolair is this volume by Gifford Lewis, published in 1985 by Penguin Viking. Ostensibly relating to the writings of Somerville and Ross, it is illustrated with a well-researched collection of old photographs which include some of the castle at The Haven still standing.

This photograph (above) is particularly valuable. It is also from the Gifford Lewis book and is captioned as follows:

. . . A very early plate by Sir Joscelyn Coghill (c. 1865) showing the old Castlehaven church and above it the Castle in which the Reverend Robert Morrit lived, and before him the Reverend Thomas Somerville. The Tithe War had its effect. Eventually, the Tithe Commission Act of 1838 moved the burden of supporting the Protestant clergy from the peasants to the landowners. The Catholic/Protestant confrontation in Ireland came with the influx of Elizabethan English, the first after the Reformation of the English Church. Those who came to Ireland as Protestants were much less likely to be assimilated than those who came before the Reformation, like the Martins. The ousting of the topmost layer of native Catholic society by a new Protestant one is audible in the list of Rectors of Castlehaven church from 1403 to 1640: O’Driscoll, O’Callaghan, O’Driscoll, Cormac/Basse, Pratt, Stukely . . .

Gifford lewis, Somerville and Ross – The World of the Irish R.M. 1985

The aerial view shows the inlet of Castle Haven guarded by its O’Driscoll castle at the southern end. In the upper reaches of The Haven is a further castle, properly known as Raheen (or Rathin), sited above the natural spit of The League: the juxtaposition of castle and land-spit was probably deliberate, to create a defensive barrier against any invaders infiltrating the upper waters of The Haven. The mid-19th century 6″ Cassini OS map (above) shows the location in detail. James N Healy (The Castles of County Cork, Mercier Press, 1988) well describes its situation: “. . . It is a remarkable sight, tall and dignified in its quiet isolation . . .” and attributes it to the O’Donovan family, associated with Castle Donovan on the Ilen River – which we visited recently. Raheen was attacked from the water by Cromwell’s army in 1649 and remarkably survives in that breached condition today.

The coloured postcard above is based on a view probably taken around the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The viewpoint is identical with that in the header engraving, and The League can be clearly seen in both representations. Because the whole inlet is known as Castlehaven, we have to be careful when reading references or captions, as the two castles – which I always endeavour to refer to by their original names (Glenbarrahane and Rathin) are often both known as Castlehaven Castle. And, of course, we also have the castle at Castletownshend itself to further confuse the issue, although the structure there now is relatively late (the present building dates mainly from the 19th century, although an earlier Bryans Fort on the same site was probably 17th century).

Here is a very fine painted view of Rathin Castle by contemporary West Cork artist Donagh Carey (thank you, Donagh!) You can find his works here: we are pleased to have some of them hanging at Nead at Iolair. I can’t resist including this photograph taken in the 1930s (below) – from the Adrian Healy postcard collection – showing Rathin, with the added bonus of a 1936 Ford 10 in the foreground!

This view (above) is an enigma. It is referred to as ‘Castlehaven Castle’ and is a pen-and-watercolour drawing by Charles Vallancey (1721 – 1812). If the written caption is ‘Castlehaven Mouth’, then it must be Glenbarrahane (although the foreground topography should surely have shown the old church and graveyard?); if it is fact ‘Castlehaven North’, then it would more likely be Rathin – and it is certainly visually closer to this castle. However, then the mouth of the Haven is not in the right place at all. Vallancey was a British military surveyor who had been sent to Ireland in the mid 18th century: he became fascinated with the country and its topography and settled here as a self-styled historian and antiquarian. An extract of his work follows, from a report on West Cork:

. . . There was only one road between Cork and Bantry; you may now proceed by eight carriage roads beside several horse tracks branching off from these great roads; from Bantry the country is mountainous and from the high road has the appearance of being barren and very thinly populated; yet the valleys abound with corn and potatoes and the mountains are covered with black cattle. In 1760, twenty years ago it was so thinly inhabited an army of 10,000 men could not possible have found subsistence between Bantry and Bandon. The face of the country now wears a different aspect: the sides of the hill are under the plough, the verges of the bogs are reclaimed and the southern coast from Skibbereen to Bandon is one continued garden of grain and potatoes except the barren pinnacles of some hills and the boggy hollows between which are preserved for fuel . . .

Charles vallancey – A Report on West Cork, 1778, British Library

Vallancey was noted for obtaining the Great Book of Lecan (Leabhar Mór Leacáin), a medieval manuscript written between 1397 and 1418 in Castle Forbes, Lecan, Co Sligo. He passed it on to the Royal Irish Academy, where it resides today. Sadly, his work apparently only garnered the poorest of appraisals – as an example, here is the 19th century Quarterly Review:

. . . General Vallancey, though a man of learning, wrote more nonsense than any man of his time, and has unfortunately been the occasion of much more than he wrote . . .

The Quarterly review, London, John Murray

In my Extreme Green post I promised a ‘salacious scandal’ associated with Castlehaven. Alas – we have this week run out of time and space . . . Keep watching!