Enniscorthy Castle as it appears today (if you are wearing green sunglasses).

In the most recent issue of Dublin Review Colm Tóibín quotes an obscure tract which casts further examining light on a topic The Inquisition has previously glossed over in its usual glib manner; the oubliette. Discussing his father’s part-ownership of Wallop’s Castle in Enniscorthy, Tóibín quotes Hore’s History of County Wexford, written by Herbert Hore and published many years later by his son;

“…a circular oubliette, lit only by a small opening about six inches by four inches, close to ground-level. The chamber is connected with a second chamber; rectangular in plan, also underground. Stone steps led down from within the castle to this second chamber. Both chambers have the solid rock for floor out of which they are in part cut. The rock is similar to that of which the castle is mostly built… Incised in the plaster of the wall of the circular chamber under the south-west tower is an interesting graffito. It is three feet four inches high, and represents a young (unbearded) man in, apparently, the dress of a halberdier of the sixteenth century. His doublet is full above shoulders and body, fastened in at the waist, and ends above the elbows. He wears a ruff, or large collar. His hosen are tied in above the knee. With his left hand he flourishes a sword over his head, the scabbard of which sticks out at nearly right angles to his body… Even if he be not a halberdier, the dress is undoubtedly Elizabethan, and the graffito may be ascribed with mush probability to the time shortly after 1585…”

Enniscorthy Castle, Co.Wexford by Francis Grose, Published by S.Hooper in 1792. Available from http://www.oldirishmaps.com/

Bibliography
Visit the castle – information here
Number 43, Summer 2011, Dublin review
Wikipedia entry for Herbert Hore

Original content created by: The Inquisition

The supposed foundations of the birthplace/family home of St Columcille in the middle of nowhere, County Donegal. This forlorn site is probably not a foudation at all, but rather just a flat rock. It is also very small, not the well-appointed palatial quarters described here.

The ancient middle class seem to have revelled in luxury every bit as much as the tastelessness of the recent Celtic Tigers. Below is the description of the home of a “boaire”. This was a freeman of a higher grade. This was not a member of the aristocracy. It was more likely the home of an early equivalent of a bank manager, upper-middle ranking civil servant or estate agent.

Even without a single mention of the surrounding neighbourhood it still sounds pretty flash.

The Crith Gablach (Brehon legal tract defining social status) describes the typical hiberno bourgeois pad. Although there is no mention of it being situated within close walking distance to anything, having an unsurpassed view of something or even mention of the surrounding neighbourhood it still sounds pretty flash. Also, there is no mention of local schools or the need for planning permission in the event of the owner wishing to extend:

“All the furniture of his house is in its proper place -

• a cauldron with its spit and handles;
• a vat in which a measure of ale may be brewed;
• a cauldron for everyday use;
• small vessels: iron pots and kneading trough and wooden mugs, so that he has no need to borrow them;
• a washing trough and a bath;
• tubs, candlesticks, knives for cutting rushes;
• rope, an adze, an auger, a pair of wooden shears, an axe;
• the work-tools for every season — every one unborrowed;
• a whetstone, a bill-hook, a hatchet, spears for slaughtering livestock;
• a fire always alive, a candle on the candlestick without fail;
• a full ploughing outfit with all its equipment.

There are two vessels in his house always: a vessel of milk and a vessel of ale.

He is a man of three snouts:
the snout of a rooting boar that cleaves dishonour in every season, the snout of a flitch of bacon on the hook, the snout of a plough under the ground; so that he is capable of receiving a king or a bishop or a scholar or a brehon from the road, prepared for the arrival of any guest-company.

He owns seven houses:
a kiln, a barn, a mill (a share in it so that it grinds for him), a house of twenty-seven feet, an outhouse of seventeen feet, a pig-stye, a pen for calves, a sheep-pen.

He has twenty cows, two bulls, six oxen, twenty pigs, twenty sheep, four domestic boars, two sows, a saddle-horse, an enamelled bridle, sixteen bushels of seed in the ground. He has a bronze cauldron in which there is room for a boar. He possesses a green in which there are always sheep without having to change pasture.

He and his wife have four suits of clothes.”

The Iron Age 'Pimperne house' was reconstructed at Butser Hill near Petersfield, Hampshire and suggests that it is probably a mistake to assume primitive squalor. (Richard Muir)

Bibliography
The quoted text is mentioned variously in:
The Irish, A Treasury of Art and Literature, ed. Leslie Conron Carola, Trident, 1993
Ancient Laws of Ireland, Rolls Series, 1879
The Annals of Dublin, EE O’Donnell SJ, Wolfhound Press, 1987
The Crith Gabhlach on Wikipedia

Original content created by: The Inquisition