Months of archaeological work carried out on Offaly castle

MONTHS of archaeological work have been carried out on a castle in Birr and a group was recently given some fascinating insights into the work during a Heritage Week event.
On Wednesday evening August 20 about fifty people met in Camcor Park to walk a couple of kilometres beside the River Camcor to the excavated ruin of Clonoghill Castle.
There we were met by Richard Reid, an archaeologist with Irish Heritage School. Richard told us that he and a group of American students have been excavating the site over the summer and into the autumn.
“Firstly, we wanted to answer the question is the Castle a Hall House or Tower House? The latter is 1600s, the former three centuries before. We dug two trenches and found charcoal. We found no pottery at all, which is unusual. Normally you'd expect to find plenty of pottery. There were no finds at all, apart from a plate which might be 1700s. A radiocarbon dating of the charcoal gave us a date of sometime between 1380 to 1480, which means it was built about the same as the Black Castle in Birr Castle.” Both the Black Castle and Clonoghill Castle were strongholds of the O'Carroll Clan. Richard pointed out that the walls of Clonoghill Castle are “incredibly thick. They are ten foot thick, which would lead you to believe that this area was a pressure point, an area of focus by hostile people in the region. We know the Bigoe Glass Makers lived here in the 1700s, so we think they carried out some modifications on the castle.
“We are not exactly sure what we have here. The remains you are looking at could be the remains of a double-roomed bottom floor. We think we might have the remains of a cupboard in the corner. There are also a lot of strange holes going through the walls. We think they were used as wall ties, to strengthen the walls, because the foundation is sand which is not a good foundation for a building.” The castle is about 13 metres long by a few metres wide. There's a raised area surrounding the castle, which was a defensive bank.
“There are quite a few questions to still be answered,” continued the archaeologist. “Our geophysical survey wasn't fruitful as there was a lot of background noise. We are thinking of using Ground Penetrating Radar which might reveal more answers.”
Heritage Officer Amanda Pedlow told the group that Offaly County Council is “the proud owner of this site and Blundell Castle in Edenderry. There are about 200 castle sites in Offaly.”
Our walk to the castle was part of a beautiful walk from Elmgrove following the river's bank, which has received some important funding in the recent tranche of Outdoor Recreation Projects grants announced recently by Dara Calleary, the Minister for Rural Development.
The walk follows the banks of the River Camcor for a considerable distance from Elmgrove to either the castle or Springfield Bridge on the Birr / Kinnitty Road and has been in existence for many years as a fisherman's path. It's also been used by locals for many years, a usage which rose spectacularly during the Covid years.
The grant announced on Thursday will be €17,538 and will go towards fencing work on the route and erecting signposting. The Irish Heritage School under Denis Shine (who is also Chairperson of Birr 20:20) has done a great job in recent months of clearing undergrowth and briars from the path. The signposted walk will be on the southern bank of the river. There is a fisherman's path on the northern bank but the fencing is too close to the river and the bank is susceptible to erosion. The funding announcement is important because, while creating a signposted walk has been talked about for a number of years, no funding has been granted towards the physical aspect of the work until now.
The Camcor walk is a treasure which quite a few people are unaware of. Once the works are complete and the signs up, a lot more people will be aware of it.
The Camcor Working Group was initiated by Birr 20|20 Vision by previous Chair Salters Sterling. This Working Group, which was initially chaired by Councillor Peter Ormond, looked at the project from a number of different points of view, including engineering, ecology, project management, biodiversity, hydrology, and social inclusion.
The Working Group's aim was to progress a range of projects related to the river, most notably the Elmgrove to Springfield public amenity walk which runs through the picturesque old demesne landscape of Syngefield House, which also contains Clonoghil Castle (at the back of Syngefield Industrial Estate). Birr 20|20 says the new walk will be a 5km loop linking the Camcor and Birr Town and is on course to open in 2025. The walk is the first step of an ambitious project which will ultimately link Birr Town to a series of walks at Killaun Bog (which is about four miles from Birr), starting with the ‘Killaun Explorer’s Route’.
One milestone of the Camcor Working Group was already reached in 2022 with the publication of “Camcor – The River of Birr” by John Feehan. The book succinctly presents the importance of the Camcor in an engaging and accessible manner, with chapters on the course of the Camcor, its natural history, mills and distilleries, the Camcor basin, the river as an amenity and bridges of the river. It also makes an impassioned plea to preserve the natural beauty that we have.

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