1996:387 - DUNGARVAN CASTLE, Dungarvan, Waterford

During a second season of excavations at the castle the second storey of the main building in the shell keep was cleared, the entrance to the keep was examined further, a trench opened the previous year in the castle yard was extended, and a second trench was cutin the yard, to the south of the shell keep.

The shell keep
The profile of the new trench in the yard implies a substantial ditch around the shell keep, potentially flooded at high tide, and open into the sixteenth century. Access to the keep was over the ditch and through an opening 1.8m wide in the east wall. A single drawbridge pit was found below the passage through the wall. The main building inside the keep, against the north wall, was originally only two storeys high, but was extended in length and an extra storey added probably c. 1260. During reconstruction the new wooden floor between the first and second storeys was replaced with a barrel vault (largely surviving). The building was damaged by fire and repaired in the seventeenth century.

The castle yard
An early enclosure adjoining the keep is represented by a stony bank found in the extended trench and in the 1995 trench under the south gate-tower. The substantial south and east curtain-walls were built with the round tower and gate-house, probably in the late thirteenth century. The remains of a contemporary north curtain-wall underlie the current, post-medieval, north wall. (The west curtain-wall is late, associated with the infilling of the ditch around the shell keep.) At an early stage buildings with stone footings were constructed against the inside faces of the north, east and south curtains.

Late seventeenth-century damage
The castle was slighted in the closing years of the seventeenth century (suggested by coin evidence, not documentary references), and very shortly afterwards restored for garrison use.

Rathduff, Fethard, Co. Tipperary