By thomas johnson westropp, M. A



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Dough.—The liss stands on a gently rising ground near the railway and Stacpooles’ Bridge.1 The name is most probably derived from the sandhills, Dumhach, but this word is frequently used for a fort. The liss was evidently, from its size and choice site, the chief residence of the neighbourhood, but the name is forgotten. It overlooks the country from Callan to Tromra and Moher, with a wide reach of sea and coast.

It consists of an outer ring 5 feet to 6 feet high and 15 feet thick, within which is a wet fosse, with springs to the north-east, 12 to 15 feet wide at the bottom eastward, and 5 to 6 feet deep. The inner ring rises 5 to 7 feet high over the garth, the entrance facing eastward. The interior is 90 feet across, with no foundations, the main ring being 32 feet thick at the base and 6 feet on top to the east and 26 feet thick to the


  1. The Stacpooles’ old house of Enagh, the residience of an observant and satirical diarist and collector of letters, 1760-1795, William Stacpoole, afterwards of Edenvale, was intact and even partly roofed till 1908. it was then half demolished.

CAHEKMURPHY CASTLE AND ITS EARTHWORKS 135

west, where the fosse is 28 feet wide. It rises 11 feet over the fosse to the west, 14 feet to the north, and 9 feet at the entrance, and is thickly covered with brambles, sallows, and hawthorns.

Fortified Headlands.

The low coast had few projecting headlands to attract those who entrenched nearly every promontory on the west coast of Ireland; but two sites, though of very slight interest, remain in Ibrickan, and for the better completion of the survey of fortified headlands I may give them.

Freagh (22).—The place is almost devoid of historic record, and derives its name from the inner rising ground, which in parts is heathery, for I know of no heath growing near the castle and the sea. “Freth ye Castle is marked on the Map in Petty’s “Hibernia Delineata” of 1683. The castle has been removed save a large, top-heavy fragment, resting on two inadequate piers of a square doorway; that it still stands in so exposed a place is wonderful. The headland is so low at this point that the castle was clearly not designed to protect a natural defence, but only to command the shore. Further seaward the point is cut across by a narrow cleft, evidently a collapsed natural arch, left dry at low tide. A steep slope rises beyoud it, and from traces of stone facing near the top, it is evident that the now isolated portion was a promontory fort. There is a fine “puffing-hole,” Poulatedaun, in the next headland to the north which, with favourable wind and tide, throws up great spouts of spray.

Mutton Island (38).—This island, the only one of any size on the Clare coast, is of some scientific importance. Eleven centuries ago, at some time between 799 and 804, we read how Inis Fitae was torn into three by a great wave, and perhaps an earthquake. “On the day before the festival of St. Patrick a great wind arose, accompanied by thunder and lightning, and the sea swelled so high that it burst its boundaries,” heaping the coasts of Corcavaskin with rocks and sand, and drowning 1010 persons.1 The three fragments remain, known as Inismattle or Illanwattle (the southern), Iniscaeragh or Mutton Island (the central), and the bare rocks of Carrickaneelwar and Roanshee (to the north). The name Inis Fitae2 never reappears. In 1215, the Norman government (which then had little (if any) direct power in Thomond, but was commencing the policy that ended so disastrously for the English a century later) confirmed a grant of the native king, Donchad Cairbreach O’Brien, to the Archbishop of Cashel. This included the lands of Dunmugyda-inver (Dumhach, or Dough, creek, near Lehinch), Idul- culchy, Fumaneyn, Ydoonmal, Treanmanagh, Tromrach (Tromra opposite



1 Annals of the Four Musters, 799, Clonmacnoise, Chronicon Scotorum, 804, and Ulster, 803 (804), also Irish “Nennius,” p. 207.

2 Or, as the Annals of Ulster (803) say, “The sea divided the Island of Fita into three parts, and the same sea covered the land of Fita with sand, that is as much land as would support 12 cows.

136 ROYAL SOCIETY OF ANTIQUARIES OF IRELAND

Mutton Island), and two islands of the sea, namely, Iniskerech and Inismatail (Mutton and Mattie Islands).1 The last has now only a slate quarry to suggest that it was likely to be of any value. It is evident that the higher ground near the “Telegraph Tower,” rising 115 feet, broke the wave and turned its course over the low rocks and drift fields to either side, which it entirely removed. There may also have been some sinking of the coast, as submerged bogs and forests exist near Dunbeg and at Liscannor Bay.

The original island, measuring over the fragments, was at least two miles and a quarter long. Roanshee is so called as being the “seat” of numerous seals.2 These animals abound round the three islands to the disadvantage of the fishers. The use of “mutton” for the living sheep subsisted in Clare down to at least 1712, as seen in the numerous grants of the Earl of Thomond in that year, where variant numbers of fatt hogges, fatt muttons, and couples of capons,” with “a Protestant soldier in times of necessity,” are to be supplied by the grantees of the various townlands. Petty calls the island Enniskerry in 1683.3 It eventually passed to the Stacpooles, who recently sold it.

This is no place to describe its picturesque, rugged cliffs with great caves and arches, up which the spray breaks before the west wind for over 100 feet, or the great double-arched hall with an up-shaft, called Iffrin- beg, or “Little Hell,” or even the rude “Bed of St. Senan,” a shattered rude cross find the gable of his little oratory.4

At the south-west corner of the island, however, we find a long, narrow cape about 60 or 70 feet high, and sloping southward, which was fortified by a strong, dry-stone wall. Across the neck, as usual at a strongly marked fault ending in gullies, is a semicircle of tumbled stones, here and there showing a few courses of the facing, proving it to have been fairly well built. It is 117 feet long at present, abutting at its southern end on a narrow gully. It probably extended 33 feet farther to the north, where the great waves have washed the cliffs bare and made a dark and horrible chasm. The wall had two well-built faces of moderately large blocks with filling, and varies in thickness from 18 feet to 25 feet thick. It was merely a refuge, too storm-swept for residence, but a sort of groove or terrace carpeted with sea-pink, is sufficiently sheltered by the northward rise of the rock to have been available for huts; no foundations are extant. The headland, seen from the north, is dark and impressive, with great black niches in its face. Out near


  1. Cal. Documents relating to Ireland.

  2. I saw a group of eight to ten together, and single ones elsewhere as I last crossed from Mutton Island.

  3. Hibernia Delineata, Map 17. The same map gives the neighbouring names— Pollomallen (Milltown); Keiltis(Quilty); Fintrabegg (Cream Point Pay), and Breaghva (Breffy).

  4. The later edition of Archdall’a Monasticon (Dublin, 1872), vol. i, p. 76, is wrong in saying that the ruins of a round tower remain.

CAHERMURPHY CASTLE AND ITS EARTHWORKS 137

the end is a down-shaft to the sea which spouts columns of foam in storms. The bay beside it is called Coosnadread; it is hard to get information, but I was told that the site was called Gorraun by some, Gray Rock, and Craglea, by others; “Carricklea” was the north-western headland in 1838, so I adopt the name “Dun of Gorraun’’ for distinction. Seen, as we last saw it, on a hazy September evening, with the sun setting beyond it, and the waves roaring up the cliff, it is a very impressive spot, and it is curious that no one seems to have visited so picturesque a place and noticed its sea-wrecked rampart “ where the waste land’s end leans westward.”






This brings the number of fortified headlands in county Clare up to fourteen — 1, Moher; 2, Doonaumnore (inland); 3, Annestown, Inchquin Lake : 4, Freagh; 5, Iniscaeragh; 6, Doonegall; 7, Farighy; 8, Doonaunroe; 9, Illaunadoon; 10, Bunlicka; 11, Dundoillroe; 12, Cloghansavaun; 13, Dundahlin; 14, Dunmore, or Horse Island.1



Probably there were also at Bishop’s Island, Loop Head,2 and Doonass, making over sixteen promontory forts.

1 For these, see Journal, supra, vol. xxv, p. 346 ; xxxviii, pp. 28, 221.

2 There seems some trace of building on Dermot and Grania’s Rock; perhaps the chasm was then narrow enough to be crossed by a slight bridge. Doonass Turret Rock is “the Rock of Astanen” in Elizabethan grants, and probably the site of the “Duneasa-Danainne ” of early records. The castle, the subsequent “Turret,” and the terraces built by the Massy family, have obliterated all old traces. It overlooks a fine reach of rapids, and the “Leap of Doonass.”
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