Redwood Castle (also known as Egan Castle or Caislean Choillte Rua in Irish) is a Norman castle near Lorrha in County Tipperary, Ireland.

The castle was built by the Normans around 1200 AD, and was occupied by them until c.1350, when the Mac Aodhagáin (MacEgan, Egan, Keegan) were installed on the lands.

As hereditary Brehons or lawyers, the Mac Aodhagáin clan established a school of learning here, which was patronised by the family for several hundred years.[1]

The castle was enlarged and renovated several times, with considerable work from 1350.[2] Aside from the original thick stone walls, the building demonstrates some architectural features common to Irish fortifications of the period (including a murder-hole), and some less common features (including a Sheela na gig).[3]

The castle remained under continuous occupation and ownership by the (Mac)Egan families until it was confiscated and burned at the time of the Cromwellian conquest c.1650.


Castle gate
The site remained in ruin, with only the thick exterior walls standing, until Michael J. Egan, a Mayo lawyer, purchased and renovated the building in 1972. While the castle remains a private residence, terms of the Department of Finance Heritage/Cultural Tax Relief mean the castle is periodically open to the public during the summer months.[1] It is a protected structure (ref S329) on the North Tipperary list of protected structures.

Redwood Castle

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Portumna Castle is a semi-fortified house in Portumna, County Galway, Ireland. It was built in the early 17th century, during the reign of King James I.

Location
Portumna Castle is located close to the shore of Lough Derg near where the River Shannon enters the lake.

History
When it was built, Portumna Castle was without equal in Ireland at the time in style, grandeur and distinction,[citation needed] outshining castles at Rathfarnham, Kanturk, Carrickfergus, Charlemont and Burncourt. Its builder was Richard Burke, 4th Earl of Clanricarde, Lord President of Connaught, of the de Burgo family of Norman descent. The castle was built around 1610 to 1618 at a cost of £10,000. The Earl also built a mansion, Somerhill House, Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent.

Portumna castle was one of the first, if not the first, building in Ireland built in the Renaissance style already common in Italy and France for over a century, but which took a long time to filter through to Ireland.[citation needed] The Renaissance features of the exterior are, strictly speaking, limited to the doorcase of the front entrance and the Tuscan gateway of the innermost courtyard, but the layout is an expression of Renaissance ideas. The castle is symmetrical in shape and consists of three stories over a basement with square corner projecting towers. The castle measures 29.7m by 21.2m and the corner towers are 6.5m square with gunports. A central corridor, 3m wide, runs longitudinally from top to bottom, supported by stone walls, which contain numerous recesses and fireplaces.

The castle was abandoned as a home following a fire in 1826. The Office of Public Works has re-built the huge chimney stacks. The estate grounds contain walled gardens, gate lodges, gateposts and a yard.

Portumna Castle

Birr Castle (Irish: Caisleán Bhiorra)[1] is a large castle in the town of Birr in County Offaly, Ireland. It is the home of The 7th Earl of Rosse, and as such the residential areas of the castle are not open to the public,[2] though the grounds and gardens of the demesne are publicly accessible.

The castle grounds are also home to Ireland's Historic Science Centre, a museum of Ireland's historic scientists and their contributions to astronomy and botany.[3]

History
There has been a castle on the site since 1170, and from the 14th to the 17th century the O'Carroll family ruled from here over an area known as ""Ely O'Carroll"".[4]

After the death of Sir Charles O'Carroll, Sir Laurence Parsons (died 1628) was granted Birr Castle and 1,277 acres (5.2 km2) of land in 1620.[5][6] Parsons engaged English masons in the construction of a new castle on the site. This construction took place, not on the site of the O'Carroll's Black Tower (since disappeared), but at its gatehouse. ""Flankers"" were added to the gatehouse diagonally at either side, giving the castle the plan it retains today.[5]

After the death of Sir Laurence Parsons and of his elder son Richard, the castle passed to his younger son William.[7] During the Irish Rebellion of 1641 William was besieged at Birr for fifteen months by Catholic forces. After the civil war, William's son Laurence (baronet from 1677) refurnished the castle.

A later descendant, Laurence Parsons, 2nd Earl of Rosse, also engaged in some re-building, and heightened and ""Gothicised"" the castle in the early 19th century. In turn, his son, William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse, was responsible for the construction of the great telescope at Birr. When completed in 1845, it was the largest telescope on earth, and capable of capturing more light and seeing further into space than any telescope had done before. Birr therefore became a focus for astronomical observations, and visitors came to visit the observatory from all over the world - including Charles Babbage and Napoléon Eugène, Prince Imperial.[5]

When the 3rd Earl died, his sons carried on the scientific tradition, and the 4th Earl (Lawrence Parsons, 4th Earl of Rosse) is noted for measuring the heat of the moon. After his death in 1908, however, the telescope fell into disrepair; the mirror was taken to the Science Museum in London, and circa 1914 the telescope's metal supporting structure was melted down to be used in the First World War. In 1925 the wooden structures around the walls were demolished for safety reasons. Following several intermediate restoration attempts, the telescope was restored more completely in the late 1990s.[8]

The ""Great Telescope"" and other features

A main feature on the grounds of the castle is the ""Great Telescope"" or Leviathan of Parsonstown or The Rosse Telescope) of the third Earl of Rosse, an astronomical telescope with a 183-cm (72 in) reflector. It was completed in 1845 and was used for several decades before the last observations were made in the first years of the 20th century. Its record size was not surpassed until the completion of the 100-inch (2.5-meter) Hooker Telescope at Mount Wilson Observatory in 1917. It was dismantled in 1914, but the structure was restored and the telescope reconstructed in the 1990s and is open to the public.

Laurence Parsons, 4th Earl of Rosse and his mother were eminent photographers and her darkroom, which is also on show, is believed to be the oldest surviving example in the world.

The grounds of the castle contain the oldest wrought-iron bridge in Ireland, dating from 1820.[9]

The walled gardens in the grounds feature Box Hedges that are over 300 years old. They are also, according to The Guinness Book of Records, the tallest hedge in the world.[10]

The Irish entry to the 2014 European Tree of the Year contest was the Birr Castle Grey Poplar (Populus x canescens). On 12 February 2014, while voting was still open, it was blown down in a storm.[citation needed]

In 2017, LOFAR radio-telescope station IE613 was constructed in the grounds of Birr Castle[11]. This is the westernmost station in the LOFAR network.

Birr Castle

Clonony (Irish: Cluain Damhna Beag) is a hamlet in County Offaly, Ireland, on the R357 regional road. Located between the River Brosna and the Grand Canal, it is noted for its late medieval tower house of the same name, which was built in 1500. It is situated in the parish of Gallen and Reynegh and lies approximately one mile west of Cloghan and four miles east of Banagher.

Clonony Castle
Clonony Castle (Caisleán Chluain Damhna) is a Tudor castle built by the MacCoughlan clan, and ceded to Henry VIII by John Óg MacCoghlan, then to Thomas Boleyn when Henry wanted to marry his daughter Anne.[1] Mary and Elizabeth Boleyn, second cousins to Queen Elizabeth I, lived out their lives in this castle and their tombstone still stands on the castle grounds. The grave was discovered in 1803, approximately 100 yards from the castle. The inscription on the eight feet by four feet, limestone flag reads: ""Here under leys Elisabeth and Mary Bullyn, daughters of Thomas Bullyn, son of George Bullyn the son of George Bullyn Viscount Rochford son of Sir Thomas Bullyn Erle of Ormond and Willsheere.""[2]

The castle was occupied from 1612 to about 1620 by Matthew de Renzi (1577–1634), a London cloth merchant originally from Cologne in Germany, who created the first English-Irish dictionary, according to his tombstone in Athlone. He acquired it after it had been forfeited by the MacCoghlans during the Nine Years' War.[3]

The fifty-foot tower, an Irish National Monument, is surrounded by gardens and a moat. The castle is a few miles from Clonmacnoise, an ancient seat of Irish learning. Shannon Harbour and the towns of Cloghan, Banagher and Shannonbridge are close by. The castle is currently being restored, and is open to the public at no cost, and although there are no specific hours, the owners try to keep the castle open and encourage tours.

The castle has all the basic features of a tower house of this period such as machicolation, murder hole, base batter, mural passages, spiral staircase, gun-loops, garderobe and bawn. The first floor had collapsed but has been replaced in recent restoration works by the owners. The castle also boasts a barrel-vaulted ceiling making up the second floor which has been restored.[4] The Tower House is three storeys high with an entrance in the west wall with a machicolation above it. There is a fire-proof vault over the ground floor in the interior and a spiral stair leads to the upper floors. There are round-headed, ogee-headed and flat headed windows. The bawn wall with its two square corner towers and entrance, which had a coat of arms, was reconstructed in the nineteenth century and gives a good impression of how an original Tower House might have looked, with a set of perimeter and internal defences. The inner bawn building in front of the west entrance appears to be a nineteenth-century construction.[5]

The Annals of the Four Masters record ""A great war broke out in Dealbhna between the descendants of Farrell Mac Coghlan and the descendants of Donnell, in the course of which James Mac Coghlan, Prior of Gailinne, and the Roydamna of Dealbhna Eathra, was killed by a shot fired from the castle of Cluain-damhna.

Clonony

Leap Castle (pronounced “Lep”) is a castle in Coolderry, County Offaly, Ireland, about four miles north of the town of Roscrea and 6 miles south of Kinnitty on the R421.

History
There are varied accounts as to when exactly the main tower/keep was constructed; ranging anywhere from the 13th century to the late 15th century, but most likely around 1250 CE. It was built by the O'Bannon clan and was originally called ""Léim Uí Bhanáin"" (as was the fertile land around the castle which was associated with the Bannon clan), or ""Leap of the O'Bannons"". The O'Bannons were the ""secondary chieftains"" of the territory and were subject to the ruling O'Carroll clan. There is evidence that it was constructed on the same site as another ancient stone structure perhaps ceremonial in nature, and that that area has been occupied consistently since at least the Iron Age (500 BCE) and possibly since Neolithic times.

The Annals of the Four Masters record that the Earl of Kildare, Gerald FitzGerald, tried unsuccessfully to seize the castle in 1513. Three years later, he attacked the castle again and managed to partially demolish it. However, by 1557 the O'Carrolls had regained possession.

Following the death of Mulrooney O'Carroll in 1532, family struggles plagued the O'Carroll clan. A fierce rivalry for the leadership erupted within the family. The bitter fight for power turned brother against brother. One of the brothers was a priest. While he was holding mass for a group of his family (in what is now called the ""Bloody Chapel""), his rival brother burst into the chapel, plunged his sword into him and fatally wounded him. The butchered priest fell across the altar and died in front of his family.[1]

In 1659, the castle passed by marriage into the ownership of the Darby family, notable members of whom included Vice-Admiral George Darby, Admiral Sir Henry D'Esterre Darby and John Nelson Darby. During the tenure of Jonathan Charles Darby, séances were held in the castle by his wife Mildred Darby who was a writer of Gothic novels: this led to publicity about the castle and its ghosts. The central keep was later expanded with significant extensions, but in order to pay for these, rents were raised and much of the land accompanying the castle was sold. This is one theorised motivation for the burning of the castle during the Irish Civil War in 1922.

In 1974 the castle was bought by Australian historian Peter Bartlett, whose mother had been a Banon. Bartlett, together with builder Joe Sullivan, carried out extensive restoration work on the castle up to the time of his death in 1989.[2]

Since 1991, the castle has been privately owned by musician Seán Ryan, who is continuing the restoration work.

This castle was featured on the cover of several editions of the novel The Riders by the Australian author Tim Winton.

Haunting
The castle has been visited by paranormal investigators from ABC Family's Scariest Places on Earth and Living TV's Most Haunted in its first season, as well as The Atlantic Paranormal Society (TAPS) from Syfy's Ghost Hunters. Most recently in August 2014, Travel Channel's Ghost Adventures filmed their tenth season Halloween special at the castle.