County: Tipperary Site name: Cahir Castle, Cahir
Sites and Monuments Record No.: TS075-048001 Licence number: E004553
Author: Dave Pollock
Site type: Stone castle
Period/Dating: —
ITM: E 604960m, N 624780m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 52.374557, -7.927156
Trenches were cut for new electrical ducting at Cahir Castle between July and November 2014. The castle occupies a large outcrop of limestone which forms an island in the Suir. A good deal of rock appears to have been exposed during the medieval period, and much of the overlying material is associated with landscaping the castle enclosures in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Pockets of promising archaeological survival were identified, on the east and north sides of the Inner Ward, in the Middle Ward (where a natural cleft or rock-cut ditch appears to have been bridged, before being infilled, Trench 6), and on the west side of the Outer Ward, but bedrock outcropping on site must have been extensively quarried from the earliest days of castle building. Remains of the pre-Norman fort are probably restricted now to the fringe around the north and east side of the Inner Ward.
A bank of rubble predating the scorched building on the north side of the Inner Ward (Trench 9) may be part of the pre-Norman fort, or part of the early north curtain wall, visible in the outside face of the wall and continuing as the east curtain.
Knockrower Road, Stradbally, Co. Waterford
