In 1236, Lady Rohesia de Verdon was reported to have built a castle in her lands in modern Co. Louth against the Irish (GDI, I, 2334): traditionally this new castle has been identified with the present Castle Roche, which was in existence by 1318 (42nd RDKPRI, 25). The castle is sited at the edge of an inland cliff, in effect a promontory (Fig. 45). The end of the promontory is cut off by a rock-cut ditch to form the inner ward, the castle proper, with a large rectangular enclosure outside, surrounded by a stone wall and with the remains of at least one building visible in the grass: either the outer ward or a small borough settlement. The inner ward, behind the rock-cut ditch, is enclosed by a roughly triangular curtain wall, with a D-shaped tower at the northern angle (Fig. 46). The existing buildings have been given different dates by different authorities. In particular, a tower around a deep pit approximately in the middle of the courtyard has been cited as evidence of a castle earlier than the bulk of the present visible remains (Stalley, 1971), but it has also been identified as evidence of a later structure (Buckley and Sweetman, 1991, 336). In fact, the remains are probably those of a well house, contemporary with the rest of the castle remains. Likewise, Leask (1936, 183) considered the tower at the north angle to be from a later period, because it is not bonded to the curtain wall behind it, a suggestion which is contradicted by the existence of doors in the curtain, leading to its upper floors. The straight joints visible here and at the junction of the curtain wall and the hall may be attributed to caution in building on a site close to the edge of a steep cliff. What we see are probably the remains of Rohesia’s castle.
The principal feature of the castle now, and originally, is the gate house and great hall situated at the south end of the inner ward. There is a true gate house, unlike the gates at Dublin or Limerick, where the gate itself is set between two towers without any building behind to tie them together. At Castle Roche it is clear that the whole of the space above the gate passage behind the curtain wall and including the towers was treated as a whole. South of the gate house is a large rectangular building, entered through a secondary porch or lobby from
Figure 45 Castle Roche: view of the castle site from the south-west
The courtyard at the north-west corner. Its size and the three fine windows with seats in the southern wall at the ground floor show it to have been the great hall (Fig. 47). The east wall rises to a gable, at whose south end is a small door leading into a passage in the thickness of the wall. This serves four arrow loops which face east, covering the approach to the gate, and leads up to a door in to the firstfloor level of the gate house. There were two fine rooms in the gate house, at first - and second-floor levels, providing good chambers linked to the upper end of the great hall.
The design and siting of Castle Roche are very similar to those of Beeston castle in Cheshire (Ellis, 1994). Both are on inland rock promontories, and both have inner wards, cut off by rock-cut ditches, of very much the same shape and area. Entry to Beeston was by a gate house like that at Castle Roche, with side towers of the same shallow projection in plan, and also one which combined both towers and the passage together on the ground floor, although the space on the first floor is divided into two rooms. There are two main differences, which are as instructive as the similarities. The curtain wall at Beeston is equipped with three projecting towers for flanking fire, rather than the single, rather hesitant one at Castle Roche. At Beeston, the domestic accommodation seems never to have been finished: there is nothing of the integrated design of the great hall and the chambers in the gate house that we see at Castle Roche; the emphasis of
Figure 46 Castle Roche: general plan
Castle Roche is more domestic than military. Beeston was started about 1225 by Ranulf, Earl of Chester, after his return from the Holy Land in 1220; it was still unfinished at his death in 1232, and still so at his son’s death in 1237, after which the castle reverted to the Crown and lost some of its importance. This was the year before the report that Rohesia de Verdon had built her castle in Louth. The design of Castle Roche must be based on that of Beeston, which was itself one of the first in England to rely on curtain wall, towers and true gate house for its
Figure 47 Castle Roche: view of the hall and the gate house from the south-east
Strength. It seems most unlikely that Beeston would have been used as a model after 1237, when it continued unfinished and unoccupied by a lord; any imitation was probably started between 1225 and 1235.
After his return in 1226, but before his death in 1242, when his Earldom of Ulster reverted to the Crown, Hugh de Lacy II seems to have carried out two major castle-building projects. At his caput, Carrickfergus, he doubled the size of the castle by adding the present outer ward, taking in the whole of the rock peninsula on which the castle was built, eliminating the defensive weakness of the earlier castle when it occupied only the outer half of the rock (McNeill, 1981, 44-5). The new work culminated in a gate house, with towers built to be circular in plan (they were cut in half in the sixteenth century) but poorly linked, probably by a passage roofed in timber. This necessitated later work, vaulting the gate passage and constructing a new chamber over it. In their circularity, if not their poor articulation, the towers of the gate house recall those of the great gate house built by the last Marshal Earls at Chepstow in south Wales, during 123545 (Knight, 1991, 8-9).
To guard the southern approach to his Earldom from Dublin, and to link with his lordship of Carlingford, Hugh built a new castle at Greencastle in Co. Down (Jope, 1966, 211-19; Gaskell-Brown, 1979, 51-65; Hamlin and Lynn, 1988, 669). It consisted of a four-sided enclosure with corner towers, much of it reduced to ground level (Fig. 48). Outside the curtain, excavation has uncovered the ditch cut into the rock. At the south-eastern angle a dam was built, remarkable for trying to retain water in a ditch cut through totally porous rock (Fig. 49). The south-western tower was more than a three-quarter round in plan, for it extended along the southern curtain with a second set of rooms; it may have been part of a gate house. Within the enclosure the castle is dominated by a first-floor great hall. The north-east tower contained private chambers at ground - and first-floor levels, with a large building attached to the south, which may have served as a great chamber. The plan of a central hall with lodgings in mural towers is standard for the thirteenth century, while the overall plan recalls that of Skenfrith in Gwent.
The standing remains of Greencastle have been described and it has been the site of several excavations; inevitably there are some points to be made about some of what has been published. There are two, interconnected, statements in Jope (1966) which need to be corrected (McNeill, 1980, 22-7). The date ascribed to the castle of 1260 is based on a misunderstanding of a document recording repairs in that year: there are references to it in the 1250s, such as of corn being sent to it in 1254-6. The second is the statement that the central block is an ‘oblong keep of a type peculiar to Irish castle-building of the thirteenth century’. In fact it is a first-floor great hall, with an upper end at the opposite end to the entry, marked by a fireplace and a private latrine, while the presence of a dais at the same end is indicated by a raised window. This links to the remains of the tower at the north-east of the enclosure, with its great and private chambers; the hall and the chambers form a full domestic complex. As such it belongs in the mainstream of castle design, and is not peculiarly Irish, but provides a standard of living in line with contemporary castles elsewhere.
When it was excavated, the ditch along the east side was found to be half filled with masonry tumbled from the curtain wall. This lay directly on the bottom of the ditch and against the dam at the southern end of it. The sequence provides a classic conflict between interpretation from excavation and from documents. The destruction involved has been identified with that recorded in 1260 (Hamlin and Lynn, 1988, 68). Obviously this has the advantage of explaining the conclusion from the stratigraphy that the masonry was thrown into the ditch soon after the latter was dug and the dam built. The dam occupies a position where the ditch has been narrowed, apparently to accommodate it. It is also difficult to understand how anyone who had been long at the castle would fail to see that the rock was porous. Therefore, to the excavator, the dam looks as though it dates from early in the life of the castle and, because the debris lies against it, it too looks early.
This reasoning leaves us with a real historical problem. The ditch remained like this, partly filled by fallen masonry, for the rest of the castle’s life. If the collapse dated to 1260, that would include the period under the succeeding de Burgh earls, notably Richard, who was an energetic castle builder, as we shall see. It is difficult to believe that he would have tolerated his castle, where he stayed on numbers of occasions and where two of his daughters were married, to remain
Figure 48 Greencastle, Co. Down, and Athenry: plans of the castles
Figure 49 Greencastle, Co. Down: general view from the south-east
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