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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN MARCH, 2009.

E associate grand architecture less with Ireland than we do its sublime landscape. Yet, much of Ireland’s great architecture stands inseparable from its native setting. In the case of medieval Cahir Castle, the structure not only belongs intrinsically to its natural surrounding, but also stands in stark opposition to it. And, if you agree that the principal paradox of Irishness is a fondness for apparent contradictions coexisting (more or less) in harmony, then Cahir Castle may be the quintessential medieval fortress of Ireland.

CAHIR CASTLE ON THE RIVER SUIR
CAHIR, COUNTY TIPPERARY, IRELAND

onjure a prime Irish fishing stream well inland among a pretty counterpane of hills and hollows, luring both anglers and the angled to a tug-o-war over a fly rod. Split the stream with a rocky island that creates a half-falls interrupting the river’s placid progress with sudden whitewater. Dot the stream with dozens of ducks, and with fishers up to their wader-tops casting for unseen quarry. Add one more element, an elephant in the room: a medieval hulk of a castle perched preposterously midstream on the rocky island. Now you have it: Cahir Castle, brawny shouldered behemoth balanced on tip-toes in the swift River Suir.

CAHIR CASTLE: MEDIEVAL
ISLAND FORTRESS

ISTORY: Cahir Castle or something similar has occupied the island in the Suir since prehistory. When the practice of recording written history became widespread throughout Ireland with the arrival of the Anglo-Normans in the 12th century, it was recorded that one Conor O’Brien, the Prince of Thomond, a demi-kingdom in the Kingdom of Munster, built a castle called Cahir (from cathair: “fortress of stone” in Celtic Gaelic) atop the remains of an earlier fortress on an island in the River Suir in the year 1142. Now it so happens that the place, Cahir, which grew up around the castle, became a market town in the southern extreme of County Tipperary. The O’Brien princes of Thomond were not from this bailiwick. Their kingdom was well to the north in the center of Ireland centered around the River Shannon as it passes through Lough Derg near where the modern counties of Limerick, Clare, and northern Tipperary meet. The O’Brien clan became nationally prominent at the culmination of the Viking wars when Irish forces under the

command of High King of Ireland and O’Brien clan chief Brian Boru destroyed the Viking forces at Clontarf (Dublin) in 1014. Brian Boru’s headquarters in his hometown of Killaloe, County Clare, were on the River Shannon at the point where it emerged from the south end of Lough Derg. Brian Boru was a castle builder. His best known fortress castle was the Rock of Cashel, in the Suir river valley eight miles north of Cahir. One hundred thirty years later Brian Boru’s descendent, Conor O’Brien, continued his ancestor’s practice of building key fortifications by erecting Cahir Castle.

          Vikings were no longer the invaders threatening Ireland. The fractious Irish clans were no longer the united force they had been under Brian Boru at the turn of the millennium. The Clan O’Brien had reason to fear the expansionist ambitions of neighboring Irish kingdoms. One new threat had less distance to travel and larger armies: the Anglo-Normans, conquerors of Britain. In less than a century the Normans had subdued almost all of Britain and now were looking to expand into Ireland, a short hop across the Irish Sea from occupied Wales. Now Brian’s descendent Conor O’Brien had to prepare to protect his ancestral Kingdom of Thomond without knowing if his neighbors could

CAHIR CASTLE UNDERWENT SIEGES IN THE 16TH AND
17TH CENTURIES, INCLUDING FALLING TO CROMWELL
AND HIS ARMY DURING THE IRISH CONFEDERATE
WARS. REMARKABLY, THE CASTLES TOWERS AND
BATTLEMENTS REMAIN LARGELY INTACT.

be trusted and could be counted upon to join him in fighting against any invading Anglo-Normans.

CAHIR CASTLE IS THE REAL THING —
A MEDIEVAL CASTLE THAT
INVITES EXPLORATION.

          O’Brien’s choice of the island in the Suir was wise. What great medieval fortress didn’t come with a moat to prevent any enemies from scaling the castle walls? But the river-as-a-moat strategy wasn’t enough. By the end of the 12th century, Anglo-Normans and their supportive Irish clans had swept across most of Munster and much of Ireland, including the Kingdom of Thomond. The new overlords of the region were the ancestral Butlers, one of the original, old Anglo-Norman families who carved Ireland into their personal fiefdoms. In 1375 Cahir Castle was deeded to the Butler family titular head, James, 3rd Earl of Ormond. The castle served the Butlers well. Except for a year at the end of the 16th century when Elizabethan forces held the castle—the Butler family by this time had become very pro-Irish and anti-English—and a five-year period when in the middle of the 17th century when it was in the hands of Cromwell’s Parliamentarians, Cahir Castle remained in possession of the Butler family for most of the following 600 years. The family