Future looks good for one of Offaly's great castles

Cloghan Castle is one of the great castles of Offaly, one of those impressive buildings which are very small in number and which have withstood the ravages and challenges of time; buildings which are still in good nick and still inhabited.

The other members of this elite group are Birr, Kinnitty, Leap, Clonony and Charleville Castles. There are a number of other castles in the county which are, structurally, in reasonable condition (such as Ballycowan and Srah near Tullamore) but sadly they are not inhabited.

The attractions of castles are obvious. They are beautiful; impressive. They would fit naturally into scenes in fairy tales. The challenges of owning and running them are equally obvious and there are not many who are able or willing to take on the challenge. Sometimes no potential owners are forthcoming and the once venerable piles subside into rack and ruin.

Thankfully a new owner was found back in 2018 when Brian and Elyse Thompson decided to put Cloghan Castle on the market. Brian and Elyse had to wait a long time but eventually an international buyer came forward and purchased the place. A caretaker is now in situ and the building's future seems safe and secured. Meanwhile Brian and Elyse have migrated a few miles to Birr where they are living happily, retired from the enjoyable but demanding occupation of running such a big premises as Cloghan.

Brian has been very busy during his retirement in Birr and has just published a very fine book called “Two Saints and a lot of us sinners”. This beautifully produced book contains many fascinating photographs and relates the story of the castle going right back to its foundation.

When Brian left the army at the age of 24 he started a career in restoring old buildings, during the course of which he restored over seventy buildings in four countries, including two castles in Ireland, two stately homes in England, eleven Victorian villas in a London suburb, a log cabin in Canada, and forty-four buildings along the Hudson River in Newburgh, New York. He was also a founding member of the Historic Houses Association of Great Britain.

Throughout his life, Brian was greatly assisted by many other people who shared his passion for old buildings, including his daughter Rosalind and son Henry. He mentions some of these lovers of the beautiful and the old in his book's “Acknowledgements” where he thanks “my daughter Rosalind, whose enthusiastic discovery of a newspaper advertisement for the sale of Cloghan, while still a school boarder in Dublin, greatly influenced my purchase of the castle in 1972; and my son Henry for his knowledgeable assistance in the physical restoration of the building.”

In the excellent Foreword to the book an old friend of Brian's, the famous author of the Stevenson saga books Malcolm Ross-Macdonald, points out that the restoration of Cloghan Castle in the 1970s was carried out in a sensitive and intelligent way; and included the restoration of the outer walls, an act which was “rare and splendid in the long history of Irish domestic-military architecture.”

These outer, defensive walls were even improved by the Thompsons and their co-workers with the new features of a sentry walk and gatehouse added on. One can only hope that future castle restorers will, before they start their projects, look to Cloghan and see how it was done. In his Preface, Brian points out that in spite of our current travails we are considerably better off than those who came before us. He remembers the men, women and children who starved to death in the locality “within the memory of my Great Grandmother”. He points out that “Ireland has changed quite incredibly in the past twenty years, and we have never been better fed, better educated, better housed, and better clothed.”

Cloghan is one of the oldest continuously inhabited castles in Ireland and it was built on a monastic site. The Normans came to the area in 1203 and it's very probable that William De Burgo built a defensive wall around the remains of St Cronan's monastery. The Normans were expelled from the site by the O'Maddens in 1336. Brian believes it was the O'Maddens who built the present keep, sometime after 1336, and therefore the castle is Irish not Norman.

The crown took the castle and its extensive lands in 1595. In 1601 Queen Elizabeth granted the building and its 6,000 acres to Sir John Moore.

After a number of centuries the estate was sold in 1908 to the Land Commission who reduced the demesne to under 200 acres. From 1956 until October 1972, Major Denis Bowes-Daly MC owned Cloghan.

After years of restoration, in July 1991 a Minister of State officially opened Cloghan to the public. About 80 people attended the ceremony including many friends and neighbours, during which refreshments were provided in the Main Guard. Brian recalled that when he took over the castle in 1972 he had a gargantuan task in front of him which, along with the outer defensive walls, included ruined corrugated iron farm buildings, a cottage which had been inhabited by pigs, derelict land which had to be completely cleared, overgrown gardens and a castle generally in a very poor condition.

At the end of the restoration work Brian and his team of helpers had successfully adapted the building for modern living (with oil fire central heating and modern bathrooms) but without sacrificing any of its character. The interior décor was tastefully done, incorporating a blend of many eras, intermingling ancient oak furniture and oil paintings with carpets from India and China.

The finest room in the premises was the Great Hall which is some 54 feet long and two stories high, with galleries at both ends. There were ancient elk horns (perhaps 10,000 years old), four carved oak chests (one of them dated 1614) and an assortment of pikes, muskets, swords and bows. Other impressive features of the castle are the Court Room (where the O'Maddens held court) and the Battlements, from where there are fantastic views of the parkland, deciduous woodland and the Callows.

Copies of “Two Saints and a lot of us sinners” are available in the books section of SuperValu, Birr.