1996:039 - BARRYSCOURT CASTLE, Carrigtwohill, Cork

Excavations inside the bawn and immediately north of the tower house at Barryscourt failed to find evidence for structures earlier than the standing tower house. A shallow ditch below the tower was probably an open drain beside fields, and was deliberately infilled when construction commenced.

Although the tower house appears irregular in plan, an examination of the coursed stonework shows that it was built to its present design from the outset. The bawn was probably designed with the tower house but erected a short time later, and included an extra accommodation wing to the north-west of the tower.

The extra accommodation was apparently around three sides of an open area. Traces of a mortared wall to the east probably represent a free-standing building in the bawn.

Kerbing and isolated small foundations suggest a garden arrangement inside the bawn, to the north and east of the tower house, from an early date. A cultivation bed was later inserted in the bawn north of the tower house, following the removal of the free-standing building and the decorative edging, probably in the seventeenth century. Cultivation continued into the eighteenth or early nineteenth century.

Pottery from contexts postdating the construction of the tower house and as late as the use of the cultivation bed appears anachronistic. No characteristically sixteenth- or seventeenth-century sherds were recovered. All appear to be medieval, thirteenth/fourteenth-century.

Rathduff, Fethard, Co. Tipperary