County: Cork Site name: KILCOE CASTLE, Kilcoe
Sites and Monuments Record No.: SMR 140:32 Licence number: 98E0133
Author: Eamonn Cotter
Site type: Castle - tower-house
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 501879m, N 532904m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.540177, -9.414550
Kilcoe Castle is a 16th-century tower-house situated on a small rocky island off the shore of Roaringwater Bay in West Cork, the island being now linked by a bridge to the mainland. It consists of a main tower four storeys high, with a conjoined six-storey flanking tower on its north-east corner. Entrance is via ground- and first-floor doorways at the west end of the south wall of the main tower. The tower-house is in private ownership and is currently being restored as a residence. Test-trenching was carried out in advance of development.
Initial excavations on the site concentrated on a possible shell midden that was disturbed at the exterior north-east corner of the tower-house. The midden comprised a mound of black, humic material containing a dense concentration of shellfish (oysters, periwinkles and limpets) and bone (mainly cattle, with some sheep and pig). It covered an area c. 2m east-west x 2.8m to a maximum depth of 0.8m. Local information suggests that the material was dumped here from within the tower-house, and the discovery of two sherds of late 18th/early 19th-century pottery underneath the midden supports this assertion.
Excavations on the south side of the castle revealed part of a cobblestone yard from which steps lead up to the ground-floor door. To the east of the door a mortared stone base with steps at its east end appears to be the base of a flight of steps that originally led up to the first-floor doorway, directly above that on the ground floor.
Some 3.5m south of the castle parts of the foundations of a clay-bonded wall running east-west were uncovered. Between it and the stone steps more of the cobblestone yard was revealed.
A trench excavated some 15m south-east of the castle revealed the foundations of a rectangular structure from which the north-west corner was missing. A break in the wall face on its north side suggests that there may formerly have been a wall running north from it. The remains indicate a structure measuring c. 1.3m north-south x c. 2m internally, suggesting that it may have been a rectangular corner tower on the bawn wall.
At the north end of a trench excavated within the ground floor of the main tower, flagstones were uncovered that were built into the castle walls. These are almost certainly the remains of an original paved floor. In the remainder of the trench only a loose fill of large stones was found, filling a deep gully in the bedrock.
The ground floor of the flanking tower is likely to have been the castle dungeon. It measures 2.15m x 2.25m and is covered by a vaulted roof c. 4m above floor level. The only point of access to the chamber is through a narrow shaft in the roof from the chamber above, and the only light is through a small rectangular opening high on the south wall.
Deposits c. 1m deep, consisting of humic, silty soil interspersed with thin layers of mortar, were excavated. Some hair and woven fabric were recovered from the lower levels of these deposits.
Ballynanelagh, Rathcormac, Co. Cork
