Castlewaller

I found some very interesting pictures of Castlewaller on a now defunct website called castlewaller.com. I used the waybackmachine to find some very interesting information put up by Sir John Michael Waller, 10th Baronet, Newport.

I credit all this information to Sir Waller and hope he does not mind me reposting it here.

May 01, 2007

A very brief history of Castle Waller

The site of Castle Waller dates back to the Iron Age 3,000 years ago. The castle is situated near one of three Ring Forts in the Lands of Cully, seven miles upstream from the Shannon in the foothills of Keeper Hill.

Centuries later the O’Mubrians, ancestors of the Ryan clan, built it into a rough stone castle, and by the 15th century it was a fine Tower House for the local lord.

English invaders under Oliver Cromwell attacked and significantly damaged the tower house during the subjugation of Ireland in the mid 1600s. Lt. Richard Waller, a young officer in Cromwell’s army, received the castle as booty and began to repair and enlarge it. The Waller family doubled the size of the castle with a crenellated neo-gothic addition three stories high, rounded on the west side and octagonal on the east. The additions adjoined the Tower House and a complex of great stone barns; high walls with round watch towers encircled the entire castle yard and orchard. 

But the Great Famine and spendthrift ways forced the family to sell at auction in 1851. Two generations later the castle lay in ruins. By the mid 20^th century, the Tower House and other buildings were demolished and used as stone quarries.

The Tower House is now erased from the land; the neo-gothic palace now a shattered half-shell. [Note in May 2010: A recent visit to the castle shows that the remaining neo-gothic wall had collapsed since an earlier visit.] The only functioning remains are the outer walls with their broken towers and faint traces of grandeur, the vaulted stone dungeons, now sealed; and a tiny stone cottage where Mrs. Norah Ryan raised her 16 children.

Now Norah Ryan too is gone. She told us more than twenty years ago that her 16 children were no longer in Ireland.

Account of how the castle came into the Waller family

From written report to Sir Charles Waller, 6th Bt., 1898:

“According to documents in the Public Record office, Richard [Waller, pictured] was in Col. Sir Hardress Waller’s Regiment under Captain Willson. A claim by him for unpaid service in the army between Dec. 31, 1649 and July 13, 1651 amounting to ₤6, 2, 8 ¾ is preserved in said Record Office. When the forfeited lands were being distributed he received in year 1666 a certificate for his portion. The record also show that land in Killosary, Co. Dublin were transferred to him by Alexander Staples. By these entries we learn that only a part of his landed property came to him through bequest of his parents.”

These records were destroyed in the Irish Revolution. NB: While family tradition says that Lt. Richard Waller was a relative by marriage to Gen. William Waller, no reliable documentary evidence exists to support the claim. However, the connection is a mystery. Richard Waller's coat of arms does not bear the Waller heraldry, but the blue-and-gold checky of the Warenne family. 

Description of the castle, 1840

Taken from a letter by John O’Donovan, Nenagh, Oct. 12, 1840

“On the townland of Cully otherwise Castle Waller there is an old castle said to have been built by the O’Mubrians (now Ryans) and now inhabited by the Wallers whose family have been in possession of it since the time of Cromwell.

“The original part of it measures 38 ft. from E. to S.W. and 32 ft. 6 in. from N. to S.  The walls are 6 ft. 4 in. in thickness and about 50 feet in height and constructed of mountain grit.

“All the windows appear to have been modernized and much enlarged, and the original stair case which led to the top in a round tower at the S.W. corner has been destroyed and a wooden one put in its place.

“The original doorway which is constructed of cut lime stone in the pointed style is now stopped up and a modern one broken on it in the S. side.”

Description of the castle, 1898

From written report to Sir Charles Waller, 6th Bt., 1898:

“. . . located about seven statute miles east of the Shannon and about one and a half miles east of the town of Newport. About 550 feet south of the castle is the small river, a stream running westward and emptying into the Mulkear river at Newport. The Mulkear runs westerly and empties into the river Shannon.

“Although in partial ruin the castle was in a sufficient state of preservation to permit the occupation of a part of it by a farmer and his family. It presents a wild and picturesque appearance as it stands surrounded by a growth of stalwart trees. That beautiful enemy of feudal architecture, the ivy vine, aided by the humid air is rapidly destroying this monument commemorative of a very eventful era in the migration of the family.” 

  

A description of Richard Waller II, son of Lt. Richard, written for Sir Charles Waller in 1898:

“He [Richard II] appears to have been the first of his name to occupy the castle acquired by his father. A provision in his father’s will indicates that this Richard held a portion of the castle land on a lease from his father up to the time of the latter’s death and afterward from his mother during her life and finally became sole possessor of the castle and land. It is not known to the writer whether or not Richard occupied the castle as a permanent place of abode while his parents were living but there is no doubt that he eventually lived within its walls and died there and was buried in the church of Kilnarath nearby.”  

Ive posted a some of the pictures of castlewaller here - some amazing photographs. I'd never seen how impressive the building was 

Castlewaller