Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 19 November 2015 

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 38) 

A Defender of Church and Town

   The vast estates of the Fitzgeralds, the Earl of Desmond dynasty (see last week), were confiscated in the reign of Elizabeth I, and granted to various English settlers (called planters or undertakers). The names of the new settlers in Ireland who obtained grants of the Desmond estates in Cork and Waterford, were Sir Walter Raleigh, Arthur Robins, Fane Beecher, Hugh Worth, Arthur Hyde, Sir Warham St. Leger, Hugh Cuffe, Sir Thomas Norris, Sir Arthur Hyde, Thomas Say, Sir Richard Beacon and (the poet) Edmond Spencer.

   Walter Raleigh (c.1554-1618) had taken part in the suppression of the Desmond rebellion in 1579 and profited from the subsequent distribution of land. He received 40,000 acres or 162 km² which included the important towns of Youghal and Lismore. This allowed him to become one of the principal landowners in Munster, but nevertheless had only some degree of success in convincing English tenants to settle on his estates. Youghal was the home of Sir Walter Raleigh for brief periods during the seventeen years in which he held land in Ireland. The decade of the 1590s coincided with difficulties on Raleigh’s Irish plantations at a time when his own fortunes were in decline. He sold his Irish estates in 1602 to Richard Boyle, thus ending his involvement with the plantation of Munster.

   Richard Boyle (1566-1643) is closely associated with the history of Youghal, purchasing the town as part of his acquisition of the Munster estate of Sir Walter Raleigh. On the rich array of heritage information panels in Youghal, the story of Richard Boyle’s influence is related. Boyle occupied the office of Sheriff from 1625 to 1626. He had a substantial residence, known today as The College, close to St. Mary’s Collegiate Church. Boyle recognised the suitability of Youghal area for the production of pig iron, for which there was great demand in England. A plentiful supply of timber for charcoal, rich iron ore deposits, water power and a great port area all combined to generate an active iron industry in the early seventeenth century. The yew woods from which Youghal derived its name (Irish: Eochaill) were used to supply the ironworks of Richard Boyle.

   Amongst the other legacies of Boyle’s influence in Youghal are the Almshouses, which he endowed to house six old soldiers, who were to receive a pension of £5 per annum. This service was later broadened to include widows. The six houses were constructed in 1610 and continued in use in their original form until the mid-nineteenth century, when some alterations took place. They are now owned by Youghal Urban District Council and still serve a similar generous purpose.

  In 1606 Richard Boyle paid for the south transept of St Mary’s Church to be rebuilt, as a mortuary chapel for his family. Boyle’s journals record that the south-transept was the place ‘wherein the townsmen in time of rebellion kept their cows’. In subsequent years he spent thousands of pounds on the restoration of the church, including rebuilding the chancel. Historian Dr Clodagh Tait in an article in the Royal Irish Academy has an article entitled Colonising memory: manipulations of death, burial and commemoration in the career of Richard Boyle, first earl of Cork. Dr Tait describes the Earl of Cork’s “energetic tomb-building”, which cost him well over £1000, was a means of demonstrating that “he had arrived, and had created a fortune and a dynasty”. Boyle symbolically presented himself as the “spiritual successor of Youghal’s ancient inhabitants”, and as the “defender of the town and its church”. Viewing the relaxed sculpture on his tomb of a smiling Boyle lying on his side with his family around him shows how he did manipulate the meanings around how he was to be commemorated in history.

 Architect Alexander Hillis of London erected Boyle’s tomb in the south transept in 1620. The monument, heavily influenced by renaissance architecture, was the height of fashion when it was built. The work is still surrounded by its original protective wrought-iron railings displaying further pieces of family heraldry. The swords shown at the bottom are a symbol of Boyle’s power, justice and the armour of God. It shows Boyle himself reclining, with his first and second wives, Joan Apsley and Katherine Fenton respectively, to either side, his mother Joan Naylor over, and a few of 16 children, kneeling in a row in front of him. His first wife died in childbirth and she is represented with a baby at her feet. The skulls portray someone already dead at the time the monument was carved.

  Boyle himself died in 1643 and was buried here in his monument with his mother – but not his wives. Incidentally, a further elaborate monument by Boyle can be found in St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin. It was erected to Katherine Fenton, his second wife (died 1630) and finished in 1632. Boyle’s second wife Catherine Fenton bore him fifteen children before she expired at the age of 42. Of the eight daughters, seven were married to noblemen. Of the seven sons, four were ennobled in the lifetime of their father. The most notable of this extensive offspring was Robert Boyle, the natural philosopher and author or Boyle’s Law.

To be continued…

Captions:

819a. Richard Boyle’s tomb, St Mary’s Church, Youghal (pictures: Kieran McCarthy)

819b. Detail of Richard’s face, Richard Boyle’s tomb, St Mary’s Church, Youghal

819c. Richard’s children in sculpture, Richard Boyle’s tomb, St Mary’s Church, Youghal

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article,

Cork Independent, 12 November 2015 

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 37)

The Gems of the Fitzgeralds

      East Cork of the early 1600s possessed a number of old Fitzgerald family castles, which passed to Richard Boyle (1566-1643). John Speed’s map of c.1610, part of his collection of maps of Britain and Ireland from The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1611-12), showcases these structures within named territories of Irish and English lords. Three more sites are generally detailed below (continued from last week), whose ruins have survived into the modern day Irish landscape.

   Ballymartyr Castle is marked on Speed’s map, which survives as a key attraction on the Castlemartyr Resort estate. The ruins of the impressive Boyle manor house, its exterior walls, chimneys, its bawn or enclosure wall, a mural tower, and a fortified house survive as well the five-storey tower house. The tower is quite possibly an earlier structure. The historical records for the site detail a chequered history but certainly there is a sense that there is much to still much to discover and interpret about its role in the formation of the layered histories of East Cork. It is known that the first castle was first built in 1210 by the Knights Templar under the leadership of Richard Earl de Clare, also known as Strongbow. By the mid fifteenth century, the castle was the seat for the local seneschal or steward of the regional Lord appointed by James, Earl of Ormond. Ballymartyr Castle was captured in 1569 by Elizabeth’s Lord Deputy of Ireland Sir Henry Sidney, when Ormond’s men abandoned the castle overnight after a cannon attack. Sidney had initially proposed the appointment of a military governor (Lord President) in the provinces of Munster and Connacht. This incited the first of the Desmond Rebellions led by James Fitzmaurice Fitzgerald of the Geraldine family. Ballymartyr was subsequently given to Sir Walter Raleigh, and later managed by local Elizabethan steward John FitzGerald. The Earl of Ormond attacked the castle in 1579. John FitzGerald was eventually captured in 1583 and died a few years later in Dublin Castle in 1589.

    During the early seventeenth century, Richard Boyle, the first Earl of Cork, built a magnificent Manor House, whose exterior walled ruins are impressive to explore and circumnavigate. It is only when you stand by its walls that you appreciate how significant this court-like-castle would have been in the East Cork countryside showcasing a marker of a change in leadership and architecture in early seventeenth century Irish society. In the 1640s, the citizens of the castle again witnessed conflict and changed hands twice more before being set on fire to prevent it being used as a base for the Irish Confederate forces. During the civil war, the castle was captured by the Irish, and then recaptured by the Williamites in 1690, but was badly damaged and eventually abandoned and fell into disrepair. It was Henry Boyle (1682-1764), 1st Earl of Shannon and ancestor of Richard Boyle, who built the eastern portion of the present mansion house or hotel and who set about beautifying the estate between the years 1733 and 1764.

   Located c. 3 miles west of Castlemartyr village in the parish of Ballyoughtera and the barony of Imokilly is Ballintotis Castle. Its proposed restoration in 2008 led to a request for an impact assessment to be prepared and a log in the great archaeology website, www,excavations.ie. It is a small square tower-house that was built as an outer defence for the Castlemartyr estate in the sixteenth century. The castle and lands were granted to George Moore in 1579 in gratitude for his contribution to the wars in Scotland and Ireland. The castle is included in the Down Survey of 1655 and the lands of ‘Killurgane and Ballytotis’ are listed as being the property of Edmund Fitzgerald at this time. The castle survives today as a small, standard four-storey tower-house.

  Ballintotis Castle today is entered at ground-floor level by an arched door near the north end of the west wall. Part of a high rubble limestone wall survives to the west of the tower, which is interpreted as part of the original bawn wall or part of a former building which abutted the castle. The initial phase of monitoring for restoration focused on the removal of topsoil for a new driveway leading from the castle to the public road. All works associated with the insertion of services and the removal of waste from the tower-house were also monitored. Margaret McCarthy, the author of the detail on excavations.ie, details that during restoration no features of archaeological significance were identified on the surface and the finds consisted of three fragments of post-medieval ware.

   Inchiquin castle of the Fitzgeralds is also marked on Speed’s map. It is one of the few round structured castles in County Cork. The walls are from 8-12 feet thick. In 1322 a document mentions it as a round tower built of stone. It was the property of the Fitzgeralds and was a dower house for widows of the Desmond family. According to legend, the Old Countess of Desmond lived here for 70 years and died in 1604 tradition says aged 140 (!). So myth from this time has also survived in the local folklore of the area which intertwines with the landscape. Walter Raleigh later owned this property in time and sold it to Richard Boyle.

To be continued…

Captions:

818a. Ruins of Richard Boyle’s early seventeenth century manor house at Castlemartyr Resort (picture: Kieran McCarthy)

818b. Section of East Cork from John Speed’s Province of Munster, from his The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine, c.1610-11 (source: Cork City Library)

Kieran’s Our City, Our Town Article, 

Cork Independent, 29 October 2015 

Cork Harbour Memories (Part 35)

Boyle’s West Cork Towns

   Last week I mentioned Richard Boyle (1566-1643), the first Earl of Cork, and his interest in creating industrial complexes such as ironworks and associated plantation settlements. His main estates were in counties Cork and Waterford but he also owned significant property in county Kerry, including lands in the baronies of Corkaguiny and Dunkerron South. In the early seventeenth century maps of Munster, some of the key settlements which Boyle was involved in creating appear. In time, many of these developed into well loved and beautiful County Cork towns – for example Bandon and Clonakilty – both of which underpin West Cork’s regional heritage and identity.

   Professor Pat O’Flanagan’s Historic Town Atlas of Bandon relates that Boyle had an involvement in Bandon, in perhaps what could be described as its second phase of development. Bandon derives its name from the erection of a bridge over the river Bandon, and owes its origin to the English planters on the great Desmond forfeitures in the reign of Elizabeth. In 1609, James I granted to Henry Beecher the privilege of a Saturday market and two fairs at the town. Power was given to him and his heirs to appoint a clerk of the market in the newly erected town of Bandon-Bridge, or in any other town within the territory, with the privilege of licensing all tradesmen and artisans settling in them.

   The grants were shortly afterwards purchased by Richard Boyle the first Earl of Cork, whose efforts in promoting the town’s growth and prosperity led him to rewrite history as such and to be regarded as the founder of the town. He peopled it with a colony of Protestant merchants from Bristol and established iron-smelting and linen-weaving industries, all of which in a few short years flourished and increased in extent and importance. The manufacture of camlets, stuffs, and other woollen goods prevailed in Bandon to the close of the close of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, and was succeeded by the spinning and weaving of cotton, which continued to flourish till 1825. Spinning-mills were then erected on a large scale, and more than 1000 people were employed in weaving, Both branches of industry diminished, in so much as the mills became less busy and not more than 100 weavers were employed as the mid nineteenth century progressed.

  In the early seventeenth century, Bandon was under continuous attack by dispossessed Irish native families such as the O’Mahony’s. Subsequently, in 1620 Richard Boyle began the construction of a wall around the town. The wall took approximately five years to build and enclosed an area of 27 acres. Much of the walls were nine feet thick and varied in height from thirty to fifty feet. There were six round towers with additional defences provided by cannon. The river openings were protected by iron flood gates and fences. The gates were built within an archway capable of allowing the tallest cart-load to pass through. They were imposing portals and strengthened with portcullises. The bridge was built of stone and consisted of six arches. Within the walls Boyle built 250 houses. There were also three urban tower houses.

  Nearby the town of Clonakilty was formally founded in 1613 by Richard Boyle when he received a charter from King James I. It appears to have replaced the nearby medieval settlement of Kilgarriff as the focus for urban development. Boyle was constituted lord of the town, with power to appoint several of the officers and to a certain extent to superintend the affairs of the corporation, which was to consist of a sovereign and not less than 13 nor more than 24 burgesses. The sovereign was annually elected by the lord of the town out of three burgesses chosen by the corporation, and the recorder was also appointed by him. The charter conferred the right of sending two members to the Irish parliament, which it continued to exercise till the Act of Union. He settled 100 English families here. Established as a market town it was engaged chiefly in the manufacture of linen and cotton through its elaborate mills. Breweries were developed in the eighteenth century and corn and potatoes were exported to Cork. The present town was largely laid out in the period 1788-1840.

   Samuel Lewis in his Topographical Dictionary of Ireland describes Boyle’s legacy of sorts in Clonakilty in 1837; “The staple trade of the town was linen manufacture, which furnished employment to 400 looms and 1000 persons, who manufactured to the amount of £250 or £300 weekly. The cotton-manufacture also employed about 40 looms. A spacious linen-hall had been built some years previous by the Earl of Shannon…The corn trade was carried on chiefly by agents for the Cork merchants, who shipped it there and received coal as a return cargo”. In 1837, Lewis described that there were 14 lighters or boats of “17 tons burden each” regularly employed in raising and conveying sand to be used in the neighbourhood as manure. The nearby harbour was only fit for use for small vessels, the channel was extremely narrow and dangerous, and had at its entrance a sand bar, over which vessels above 100 tons could only pass at high spring tides. Large vessels, therefore, discharged their cargoes at the warehouses at Ring, about a mile below the town, the ruins of which still can be seen today.

 To be continued…

Captions:

816a. Main Street, Bandon, c.1900 (source: West Cork Through Time by Kieran McCarthy & Dan Breen, Cork City Museum).

816b. Boyle’s legacy, Mill Street, Clonakility, c.1900 (source: West Cork Through Time by Kieran McCarthy & Dan Breen, Cork City Museum).