LAST WORD: Clogh Oughter’s last stand

For many Clogh Oughter is a picture postcard image that perfectly encapsulates Cavan’s combination of beauty, mystique and history. Thanks to a new book by renowned historian CONLETH MANNING this Norman castle may finally be recognised beyond the lakelands for its fascinating role in the country’s turbulent, rebellious past, of which its walls still bare the scars.

Damian McCarney

Human remains, mortar bombs, rebellion, heroes, the despicable Oliver Cromwell - the story of Clogh Oughter’s explored by historian Con Manning has the lot.
Con’s book on Clogh Oughter is based on research he undertook as part of an archaeological team back in 1987, when a European grant enabled conservation work to be conducted on the ivy-laced ruin - that work necessitated excavation.
The castle’s history dates from around 1220, when Hugh de Lacy, the Norman Lord of Meath, tried to extend his sphere of influence beyond the Royal County and into the Kingdom of Breffni. He built Clogh Oughter castle on a crannóg, a man-made island of rock belonging to the O’Reilly (O’Raghallaigh) clan on beautiful Lough Oughter.
Con explains that the crannóg can support the weight of the imposing structure due to the sturdy foundations. “We went down below the floor of the castle just to check it out and we got nothing but rocks thrown down [on the the bottom of the lake],” he told The Celt.
While the 13th Century was a fascinating chapter of Irish history in itself, during the Office of Public Work’s six-week excavation, they found only artefacts relevant to the mid-17th Century, so it is with this turbulent period that he is chiefly concerned.
The simmering anger which bubbled into the 1641 rebellion can be dated back to King James I’s plantation of Ulster, commencing in 1609, in which many of the native landowners in Armagh, Cavan, Derry, Donegal, Fermanagh, and Tyrone were dispossessed.
“The Irish who had owned the land were dispossessed,” explained Con, who is senior archaeologist with the Department of Arts, Heritage and the Gaeltacht. “Some of them did get smaller estates as part of the plantation, but they weren’t very happy.
“There was a rebellion in 1641, and it was very successful in Cavan as the Irish of that day over-ran the whole county pretty much within a week or two and got control of it, apart from two castles. They got Clogh Oughter castle very early on.”

Captured
Myles O’Reilly was High Sheriff of the county at the time and was a descendant of the clan that had held power in Breffni for centuries. “Under the plantation of Ulster they would have had certain estates given to them; they would have had an awful lot less than before.”
It was he who made the move to seize Clogh Oughter for the Confederates. At this time the castle belonged to the wealthy planter, Arthur Culme, who lived in an impressive house on the lakeshore near to Clogh Oughter, in the townland of Inisconnell. Myles tricked Culme into letting him and others in, claiming they were on business to do with the King’s service.
“They captured the house and got the keys of the castle and they put Culme in prison in the castle. There were some important prisoners held in the castle in 1641-1642, and one of them was the protestant bishop of Kilmore, William Bedell - famed for commissioning the first translation of the Bible into Gaelic.
“He was held in the castle for three weeks over Christmas 1641, and into 1642. There were five people with him in prison, and every one of those five people have left an account of it, so the history is extraordinary.
“They were fairly well treated. The bishop was well treated. The castle was very cold, they didn’t have proper windows in yet. The man who owned Farnham at the time, Richard Castledine, was one of the people imprisoned there, and he had been a carpenter at the time. He worked for the man who owned Farnham, but eventually bought him out. So, when they were put into prison in the castle, he got some tools and timber from his captors to allow him to make shutters for the castle to keep some of the cold out.”
The Irish Confederate Catholics later released the captives but retained possession of the castle. Bishop Bedell died in 1642, with his imprisonment taking its toll.
In 1649, Oliver Cromwell led a brutal campaign to crush the revolt.
As the fighting raged on, another prominent figure, Owen Roe O’Neill, also passed away in the vicinity of Clogh Oughter.
“He was with the Irish army of Ulster, and when Cromwell arrived he was sort of manoeuvring and working his way southwards with his army and he used to spend quite a bit of his time in Cavan because he was related to the O’Reillys.”
By the time he reached Clogh Oughter, O’Neill was seriously ill, and he died in the area, Con suspects in the Culme’s house rather than the castle.
“We did a geophysical survey of that field and we found the footprint of that house,” says Con.
While Cromwell returned to England in May 1650, his Parliamentarian conquest of Ireland dragged on for almost another three years.

Crush
“The castle was besieged just before the surrender in 1653,” he says. “It was the very last place in Ireland to hold out against the Cromwelian army.
“It was difficult country around Cavan and Fermanagh and for the Cromwelians it was the last place they got to. Everywhere else in the country - even Inishboffin off the Galway coast had surrendered a couple of months earlier. This was the last outpost.”
On the rebel side, Philip MacHugh O’Reilly - a cousin of Myles - was the colonel in charge. Philip had previously been in the French army and returned to Ireland, where he held such lofty posts as High Sheriff of the county and was a Member of Parliament.
“He was the grandson of Sir John O’Reilly, so he would have been one of the main O’Reillys at the time, but it was cousins of his who were regarded as the main O’Reillys.”
The Cromwelian soldiers were determined to complete the conquest with the taking of the sacking of the castle.
“It was a major operation to get those big guns to the shore of the lake,” explains Con. “There is a road still there called Cromwell’s Road and they probably had to upgrade it to get the guns over to the lakeshore.”
A brief contemporaneous military report sent back to England in Spring 1653 detailed that one of Cromwell’s senior commanders, Colonel Barrow, was positioned in front of the castle bombarding it and noted that they had burnt the defenders’ boats and corn. Con estimates that the defenders would have numbered in their dozens.
The Celt wonders, would the Cromwelians have succeeded in starving the defenders?
“Somewhat, but I would say at night time they could still go by water to the other side of the lake. It is right out there in the lake so I don’t think they could surround it completely too easily, they were mainly attacking it from one side.”

Bombarding
This dramatic siege was central to the finds from Con’s excavations.
“They were bombarding it for some weeks presumably,” he says. “They were bombarding them with cannonballs and we found a load of broken cannonballs. They were sending bombs at it as well - mortar bombs - they were big, hollow, iron shot, full of gunpowder, with a fuse on it, and they would send it off as mortar bombs. We’ve some broken pieces of them as well.”
The results of such bombings were also located at the site.
“A bit of a skeleton was uncovered,” recalls Con, “that was the start of the work.”
“He was under rubble, so it was only three feet deep or so. I excavated that up and it was clear a proper archaeological excavation would have to be done.
Was this the first human remains you had found?
“Oh not at all,” he says, matter-of-factly. “When you excavate you find human skeletons quite a lot, in different places, in churches et cetera you come across them quite a lot or in older prehistoric burial sites.
“It was someone who was killed during the siege of the castle. So it was a fairly hasty burial probably. It was a skull and a bit of a hand. The body seemed to be badly damaged by whatever way he died.
“There were four sets of human remains - three male, one female - found altogether, believed to have been buried during the siege, we think.
“The female had lost her head in explosion, or from a large lump of metal coming at her.”
He found numerous interesting artefacts including: lead shot, the base of a cot (a carved out log boat), a musket barrel, a pistol, harp pegs, pottery, clay pipes, and a Papal seal. There are some finds which stand out in Con’s mind:
“We got some what they call ‘cloth of gold’, which is a silk that was covered with gold and then woven to make cloth. It was cloth that would have been worn by someone who was an aristocrat. And we got little bits of cloths of silver, and someone with a very high status would be wearing this more decorative type of cloth - a sash around their waist in the case of the cloth of gold and in the case of the cloth of silver it would be more decorative trimming on a glove or gauntlet, that sort of thing. That was interesting.
“We got some very fine spurs, cavalry officers would have worn their spurs and one spur was beautifully decorated, and other ones that we didn’t know until recently, when they were being conserved, they looked just like iron spurs, but there were decorations in silver encrusted into the iron when they were being made.”
Visitors to Clogh Oughter, which is today registered as a national monument, can easily identify the ravages the siege left on the castle. One side of its 2.5-metre-thick perimeter walls were destroyed by the Cromwelian forces, after the siege had concluded.
“They put a huge charge of gun powder into it and blew it up... so the castle would never be used again.”