Ardfinnan Castle

Ardfinnan Castle, is a castle built in 1185 with its sister Lismore Castle, by the river crossing at Ardfinnan (Ard Fhíonáin in Irish) in County Tipperary, Ireland. It is situated on the River Suir, four miles south of Cahir and seven miles west of Clonmel. One of the earliest Norman castles in Ireland, it represents the oldest castle built by the Plantagenets in Ireland.^[1] The castle is currently privately owned and is not open for public viewing.

Ardfinnan Castle
Ardfinnan Castle, Ardfinnan
Ardfinnan Castle Location within Ireland
Former names	Castrum de Harfinan
General information
Type	Castle
Location	Ardfinnan, County Tipperary
Country	Ireland
Coordinates	52.31°N 7.88°W / 52.31; -7.88
Completed	1185; 840 years ago (1185)
Renovated	1846
Client	John, King of England
Known for	John's first expedition to Ireland, Knights Templar

The Anglo-Norman castle is positioned on a large rocky incline above a ford in the river, looking out over the Suir valley with the Knockmealdown Mountains to the south, and the Galtee Mountains to the northwest. The castle is a parallelogram in shape with square battlements at the corners, ruins of a chapel, a circular 13th century keep and a fortified entrance gateway. The full extent of its ruins is hidden by the trees of the Castle Wood. The castle is bound at the riverbank, bridge and road by its old watermill.

Early history

The castle was built in 1185 by Prince John of England, then first Lord of Ireland, during his first expedition to Ireland. It appears to be the first castle built and occupied by a member of the English Crown in Ireland. To guard the northern border of Waterford from the Gaelic kingdom of Thomond, John's father Henry II of England proposed Ardfinnan and Tybroughney on the fording of the river Suir, with Lismore on the Blackwater as key positions to erect castles, following his visit to these sites with Hugh de Lacy in 1171. Ardfinnan and Lismore were scenic monastic sites established by Saint Carthage around 630 AD.^[2] John arrived in Waterford in April 1185 and built Ardfinnan castle, with Maurice de Prendergast said to have been granted with the Manor of Ardfinnan, twelve miles directly north of its sister at Lismore Castle, constructed soon after in the same year. Prendergast protected the royal castle of Ardfinnan or “Castrum de Harfinan”^[1] as it’s governor. John issued royal charters during his brief stay at the castle, with Hugh de Lacy as witness.^[3][4]

In opposition to John's construction of the castles, Lismore Castle was taken by surprise in an attack by the Irish, and its governor, Robert de Barry, was slain along with his entire garrison. King of Munster Donal O'Brien, King of Connacht Rory O'Conner and King of Desmond Dermod MacCarthy, now headed for Ardfinnan. Opposite the imposing castle and on the other side of the river, O'Brien became aware that he would not be able to take it by force. Feinting retreat, he was pursued by the small garrison of knights holding Ardfinnan Castle. Having drawn them out of their stronghold, he swiftly turned back towards Ardfinnan and surrounded the now exposed knights, slaying a large portion of them and subsequently taking Ardfinnan Castle. After this and further successive defeats against the Irish Kings, John's original force of 300 men was decimated and by December of 1185, he was summoned back to England by his father, leaving Hugh de Lacy at Ardfinnan.^[5]

The castle under Norman control, the surrounding Cantred of Ardfynan (Ardfinnan) was by 1210 under the lordship of Philip of Worcester, with a permanent presence of the Knights Templar, and later the Knights Hospitaller. While the Hospitallers protected this important pass between the ecclecsiatical centres of Cashel and Lismore, they constructed the castle's surviving circular keep in the early 13th century. A historical tradition of spinning and weaving in the village suggests the Knights Templars established a fulling mill while corn milling on the river bank below the castle. A William le Teynturer (Norman English: William the Dyer, of cloth) is recorded in Ardfinnan in 1295.^[6]

The castle depicted by 19th century romanticist John Callow.

Cromwellian siege

On Saturday 2 February 1650 major general Henry Ireton, who was accompanying Oliver Cromwell in his conquest of Ireland, had neither the boats nor the suitable weather conditions to make a crossing of the river Suir with his army and subsequently headed for the bridge at Ardfinnan to gain another crucial pass over the river Suir, second to the pass at Carrick-on-Suir. With a view to taking hold of the strategically placed castle which guarded this crossing from high above, he waited until around four o’clock the next morning to attempt a siege.

Defending the castle from the Parliamentarians with a small force of soldiers was David Fitzgibbon (the White Knight), Governor of Ardfinnan Castle. The Manor of Ardfinnan was by this time in the possession of the Bishop of Lismore and the Earls of Ormond. With cannons placed on a hill opposite the castle, Ireton bombarded its once impenetrable walls until there was a large breakthrough after about 8 shots and then proceeded to kill about thirteen of the out-guard and lost only two of his men with about ten wounded. After this the castle was promptly surrendered to the New Model Army who would use it as a garrison throughout their time in Ireland. Fitzgibbon was spared his life for his swift surrender of the castle, but subsequently lost his lands at Ardfinnan and was transplanted to Connacht in 1653. Guns, ammunition and other supplies arriving at Youghal would be brought over the river Blackwater at the pass at Cappoquin and then finally over the river Suir at Ardfinnan to reach the rest of the army in Tipperary. With the end of the Cromwellian campaign of Ireland, the departing Parliamentarian troops slighted Ardfinnan castle which left it partially in ruins.

Slighted 13th-century keep, uncommon in Ireland for being round and not square in shape.

British Army garrison

In 1795 with the threat of invasion during the French Revolutionary Wars, the castle was once again occupied as a military garrison, with British Army fencible units. Despite being in ruins, the position of the castle still commanded over a chief pass on the river Suir and it would be used along with the rest of the Ardfinnan and Neddans area to hold a British Army summer training camp, with reserves ready against French invasion. Training in firing and marching were essential in forging these militia into an effective military force. Although initially established as a temporary encampment for the summer months, it became a permanent camp in March 1796 by the orders of John Pratt, 1st Marquess Camden, which amounted a force of 2,740 mainly Protestant soldiers. The camp was disbanded by 1802.

Restoration

In the 18th or early 19th century, 15 acres with Ardfinnan Castle were reinstated to a descendant of Maurice de Prendergast and relative of Sir Thomas Prendergast, who were now the Prendergasts' of Newcastle. They were Protestant Ascendancy. The castle's tower-house received a restoration around 1846, with the addition of adjoining buildings and was essentially turned into a country house.^[7] Flying the Union Jack over the village and attempts at building a wall around the village green was a source of local contentment for its new occupants. The last man holding the Prendergast family seat at Ardfinnan Castle was Admiral Sir Robert Prendergast, who settled in England following retirement in 1920.

John Mulcahy, local owner of the underlying Ardfinnan Woollen Mills, purchased the castle in 1921.^[8] Further restorations were made by 1929, during which William Mulcahy recovered a Spanish helmet from the castle grounds dating to the 1601 Siege of Kinsale.^[9] The latest addition is the three-storey gable-ended wing, likely added during the 1930s.