1996:375 - NENAGH CASTLE, Nenagh, Tipperary

A four-week season of excavation in the gatehouse complex of Nenagh Castle was carried out in September for the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht There are essentially two phases to the gatehouse: an original twin-towered gatehouse of early thirteenth-century date, and a later thirteenth-century rectangular first-floor hall built across the back of it. At ground level the gate passage continued through the hall building, with chambers flanking it on either side, both of which had central pillars.

Within the hall area the ground level had been reduced in the nineteenth century, removing the flanking walls of the passage, the east wall of the hall and all medieval deposits, except for the foundation trench for the first phase. The foundation trench was quite wide and up to 0.7m deep, and it seems that a particular stratum of the subsoil had been deliberately sought out on which to found the wall. An English silver short-cross penny, minted between 1205 and 1218, was found at the base of the trench next to the wall.

Between the gate-towers were the remains of a twin-slot drawbridge pit. The fill of the pit, post-medieval in date, contained 29 pieces of moulded sandstone dumped during the dismantling of parts of the castle. These included two fragments of faces, window and door mouldings, and the central boss of a vault, decorated with a rosette. Two of the pieces have mason's marks.

Analysis of the standing fabric has revealed a possible garderobe chute in the angle between the east tower of the gatehouse and the curtain-wall, and one side of a ground-level embrasure in the western curtain, which suggests that the whole circuit of the curtain may have had two levels of defence.