2016:686 - GLANWORTH: Boherash, Cork

Excavations were carried out around the surviving wall of a ruined structure on the southern boundary wall of Glanworth graveyard, prior to its conservation by Cork County Council. The wall was part of a two-storey building, with evidence for one window on the ground floor and another, flanked by two wall-presses, on the first floor. Comparison of the excavation evidence with historic maps indicates that it was part of a range of buildings extending some 30m east-west along what is now the graveyard boundary. The buildings originally extended southwards from the graveyard into what is now a private garden, where no trace of them survives above ground. A short distance to the east the vaulted basement is all that survives of a tower-house-like structure which, though now a separate structure, was also originally part of this range. Glanworth Castle is located some 150m to the south-east.

Pottery and worked stone recovered from the excavation suggest that the building dates from the 13th century, with later modifications of unknown date, and with some modern interventions.

Evidence for a cut through the subsoil below the building foundations indicates pre-13th-century activity, possibly an earlier building. The function of these buildings is uncertain. The vaulted structure is labelled ‘friary’ on OS maps, but the only recorded monastic foundation in Glanworth is the Dominican priory to the north. The same structure is identified by the Archaeological Survey of Ireland as part of the medieval parish church of Glanworth, but that church is more likely to have been near the centre of the graveyard, where the present C of I church stands. The buildings may have been part of the medieval town of Glanworth, incorporating an urban tower-house.