2004:1368 - MAGHERNACLOY, Monaghan

Maghernacloy Castle is a rectangular-plan semi-fortified house, with a flanking tower and a staircase in a separate tower projecting at the back. Its plan has similarities to Coppinger's Court, Co. Cork, which was built before 1641, and Richhill Castle, Co. Armagh, built in the 1660s or possibly earlier. In c. 1618 the 3rd Earl of Essex granted John Hadsor of Keppock, Co. Monaghan, gentleman, 'the manor of Moymuck and nineteen tates of land, afterwards well known as Hadsor's fee-farm in the parish of Magheracloone in the barony of Farney, on a fee farm rent of £40 per annum'. Maghernacloy was one of the seventeen townlands that were part of Hadsor's fee farm grant and the castle was presumably built sometime after 1618 (Brownlow Papers, PRONI). After Hadsor, until the early 19th century, the castle passed to Thomas Sadler, a Cromwellian soldier, thence to the Brownlow family and their relatives the Clintons. It was occupied as a residence until 1942. The castle was remodelled in the late-Georgian period, from which time the present doorcase and some of the windows date.

Testing was carried out in April 2004 in advance of a planning application for restoration work on the castle. Six 1m-wide trenches were excavated by machine along the lines of a proposed external underground water mains, telephone and ESB cables, and on the septic tank and percolation areas.

Two trenches on the site of the percolation and septic tank areas, 20-60m east of the castle, exposed sandy clay subsoil at a depth of 0.3-0.45m. Other deposits of stone and clay suggest recent landscaping.

Trench 3 was excavated in the angle of the stair turret and the north wall of the castle. A stone-filled excavation extending c. 6m from the castle contained some glass and pottery of late 19th- or early 20th-century date. The fill was 0.6m deep, under 0.1m of hardcore, and continued deeper than the 0.7m depth of the trench and the required depth of the proposed wastewater pipe trench.

A rim sherd of creamware was recovered from the old topsoil under recent hardcore in Trench 4 along the east side of the flanking tower. Subsoil was exposed at a depth of 0.55m.

In Trench 5, excavated across the front of the castle, hardcore overlay a dark-greyish-brown soil, up to 0.25m thick. Two sherds of 18th-19th-century pottery, one of brown-glazed and one of black-glazed earthenware, were recovered from the dark soil. Large rounded boulders, up to 0.6m by 0.45m by 0.25m size, were present in places in the dark soil, especially in front of the present (Georgian period) door. The stones were loose and did not form any kind of structure or surface.

Natural clay subsoil was exposed at a depth of 0.2-0.3m in Trench 6, which was excavated for 10m on the driveway inside the gate.

The paucity of archaeological material found was no doubt due to the small-scale nature of the investigations, which were confined to areas due to be disturbed by the service trenches. The sherds of creamware and black- and brown-glazed earthenware are likely to be associated with the years of the Clinton occupation during the 18th and early 19th century.