Ormond Castle

Notes:

A Tudor Manor House built by Thomas Butler, 10th Earl of Ormond in anticipation of visits by his 4th cousin, Queen Elizabeth I (Harbison 1992, p. 299). It is attached at its rear to earlier castle constructions that include a curtain wall and two rectangular towers, and across the courtyard, a water tower (Corlett and O'Mahony 2018, fig. 4). These are fabricated largely of rubble and squared limestone with some squared blocks of purple conglomerate and coarse sandstone of the local Carrigmaclea Formation.

For the Manor House, externally the visible stone is that used in the window mullions, hooded moldings and door surround. The walls were rendered during recent conservation work. Inside, the pale grey limestone chimneypiece and overmantle in the Long Gallery, decorated with a pair of chained and collared griffins, is particularly impressive and thought to be the work of Irish sculptors (O'Mahony 2018, p. 14). This was removed at some point by the Butlers to Kilkenny Castle but reinstated in the 1940s. The inner surround of honed pale grey Kilkenny limestone is a very recent replacement in keeping with the original style. Another chimneypiece carries the coat of arms of the 12th Earl of Ormond and his wife Elizabeth Preston which is dated 1641 and is carved in fossiliferous grey limestone containing conspicuous brachiopods shells of several species and other fossil debris. Some of the Elizabethan plasterwork decoration survived and is particularly notable, and in the 1970s, missing portions were infilled with replacement panels skillfully cast from the older elements.