Blarney Castle

Blarney Castle. . , McCarthy Family at Blarney , Kilcrea Abbey, near Cork, where many of the McCarthy family are buried., By the fifteenth century the McCarthy family controlled much of the land in this part of the country, and Blarney Castle was one of their main strongholds. Having ruled as Gaelic Lords since at least the twelfth century the family became Anglo-Norman gentry in 1558, when Diarmaid mac Taidhg McCarthy, son of the Gaelic lord of Blarney Castle, was knighted in Limerick., The McCarthy family took the Catholic Royalist side in the English Civil war so, when Cromwell came to Ireland after the execution of Charles I, the castle at Blarney was attacked. It was confiscated in 1652. The McCarthy family regained some power when Charles II came to the throne in 1660, but once again backed the losing side in the fight between James II and William of Orange. When the forces of James were defeated at the Battle of Aughrim in 1691 the lands of Blarney were confiscated from the McCarthys for the last time., The Badger Caves , Nineteenth century depiction of Oliver Cromwell. Blarney castle was attacked under Cromwell’s orders in the seventeenth century., Blarney Castle is set on a high outcrop of limestone, with an entrance to a cave immediately below the main tower. The caves, known as ‘The Badger Caves’ are associated with a number of local stories and folk legends., In the nineteenth century there was thought to be an ‘oubliette’ set inside , a deep inescapable pit into which prisoners were thrown and left to die. Although there is no actual physical evidence of this, the stories have survived to the modern day. Another story recounts how, when Cromwell’s General, Lord Broghill, succeeded in breaking the tower walls and seizing control of Blarney Castle, he was furious to find that there was no-one inside but two old retainers. The main garrison had fled, taking the family’s gold plate, by way of the underground caves. Although there is no evidence of any escape passages today, there were apparently three passages, one to Cork, one to the lake and one leading all the way to Kerry! , Blarney Tower House, It is thought that Blarney Castle was built around 1480, although there is a date stone marked 1446 in the building, thought to have been inserted during a remodelling around 1590. The castle was a stronghold of the McCarthy family, Gaelic Lords, who expanded and remodelled it in several phases. A banking business, the Hollow Sword Blade Company, received control of Blarney after the Jacobite wars, selling it on to Sir Richard Pyne in 1702. Pyne sold the castle to James Jefferyes in 1735 and descendants of the Jefferyes, through a marriage with the Colthurst family, retain ownership of the site today., The castle is a Tower House, a type of fortification built in Ireland between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries by both Gaelic Lords and the Anglo-Irish. Tower houses, like this one, are typically four or five stories tall with one or two main chambers, plus a number of smaller chambers, on each floor. This type of castle usually has at least one stone vaulted ceiling. The vault was important because, not only did it make the thin tower more structurally sound by tying the walls together, it also acted as a fire break. Without the vault a tower house was just a big chimney and if a fire started on the ground floor the whole building could be lost. These castles have several defensive features, such as, arrow-loop window openings, a roof-walk with battlements that soldiers could fire from, and a ‘murder hole’ over the main entrance which allowed occupants to drop missiles on anyone coming in the door., Drawing of the South elevation of Blarney Castle. The famous Blarney Stone can be seen just below the battlements., Blarney is an unusually large tower house and it comprises at least two towers , the second tower was added in the 1500s. You can see the point where the two phases meet as a vertical line in the masonry on the north elevation, and as a step in the east elevation., Many Irish tower houses are free standing structures but, at Blarney, there is evidence of an outer ‘Bawn’ wall marked by the line of the stone wall around the Poison Garden. This stone wall would have surrounded several small outbuildings including kitchens and stables. It was built as an added layer of defence for the castle., Aerial view of Blarney Castle looking towards Blarney village. Note the outer wall in the left foreground., The Blarney Stone, A late nineteenth century cartoon showing a man kissing the Blarney Stone while being held by his coat tails., The word ‘Blarney’ has passed into modern speech to mean flattery and beguiling talk. It is believed that it was the actual manoeuvrings of Cormac mac Diarmada McCarthy, Lord of Blarney in the beginning of the seventeenth century, that gave rise to this term. During the Nine Years War (1594–1603) most of Ireland’s Gaelic Lords came together under Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, in defiance of the English crown. Cormac Mac Diarmada attempted to navigate a middle course., In 1601 he wrote a letter to one of Queen Elizabeth’s advisors demonstrating his loyalty with an account of how he had refused to join the rebel forces and had lost many of his gentlemen and followers in the service of the crown. Yet, a few months later, Cormac’s men had reportedly joined the rebellion. The legend goes that Queen Elizabeth I was so annoyed by Cormac mac Diarmada’s ambiguous communications that she remarked: “It was all Blarney!”, It is not clear at what date the legend became connected with the now famous stone in the battlements. Certainly, by the early nineteenth century the practice of ‘Kissing the Blarney Stone’ was well known. In in 1824, Crofton Croker, an antiquarian, informed his readers that:, A stone in the highest part of the castle wall is pointed out to visitors, which is supposed to give whoever kisses it the peculiar privilege of deviating from veracity with unblushing countenance whenever it may be convenient., The tradition became increasingly popular in the later nineteenth century, when many stories and rhymes were published which told of the stone’s magical properties:, There is a stone there that whoever kisses, , Oh he never misses to grow eloquent., The Blarney stone has been visited and possibly kissed by numerous famous people including Sir Walter Scott, Winston Churchill and Stan Laurel (of Laurel and Hardy fame)., Visitors kissing the Blarney Stone in the early twentieth century.