Gowran Castle

Gowran was a settled place of importance long before the Normans landed in Ireland in 1169. Its older name was Bealach Gabhrán, and a battle was fought there in 754. Kings of Ossory were often referred to as kings of Gowran, and are held to have had a residence in the area as early as 489. The Mac Giolla Padraig, whose name survives today as Fitzpatrick, were chief rulers of Ossory and kept a residence at Gowran, while O'Donnchadha, anglicised as Dunphy, was chief of Gowran and of most of the country around it. In 938 the district formed part of the ancient cantreds of Oskelan and Ogenty within the lands of Ossory, occupied by the O Dunphy clans, the Mac Giolla Padraig being the chief rulers of Ossory at that date.

The ground around the town still carries the marks of that older occupation. Place names such as Rathvaun, Rathcash, Rathcusack and Rathgarvan record raths, the enclosures where people lived, farmed and foraged, and which also served as burial places; larger sites took the name dun, as at Dungarvan in the same parish. A Christianised ogham stone of the third or fourth century, now displayed in St Mary's Collegiate Church in the town, points to residence and worship on the site reaching back some two thousand years. Nearby Tullaherin, with its church, graveyard and round tower, dates to the sixth century, and at Freestone Hill four kilometres away archaeological surveys in 1948 and 1951 recovered Roman coins and other artefacts from a settlement of the Bronze and Iron Ages.

After the Norman invasion of 1169 the Manor of Gowran, a grant of 44,000 acres, was made to Theobald Fitzwalter, also styled Theobald Walter, 1st Baron Butler and first Chief Butler of Ireland. The Butlers went on to hold land in the Gowran area for almost five hundred years.

The first Gowran Castle was built in 1385 by James Butler, 3rd Earl of Ormond, close to the centre of the town and its wall, and he made it his usual residence; he was known as the Earl of Gowran. In 1391 he bought Kilkenny Castle together with a large part of County Kilkenny. He died at Gowran Castle in 1405 and was buried in St Mary's Collegiate Church alongside his father James Butler, 2nd Earl of Ormond, his grandfather the 1st Earl, and his great-great-grandfather Edmund Butler, Earl of Carrick and 6th Chief Butler of Ireland. The 2nd Earl was usually called The Noble Earl, being through his mother a great-grandson of Edward I of England.

Gowran Castle was not the family's only work in the district. The Butlers also raised Ballysean Castle, its name written variously as Ballyshawnmore and Ballysheanmor, near the centre of Gowran, Neigham Castle four kilometres from the town, and Paulstown Castle three kilometres out on the ground between Gowran and Paulstown. In 1501 Margaret FitzGerald, Countess of Ormond, rebuilt Gowran Castle; she also had the decoration of St Mary's Collegiate Church to her name.

The Cromwellian invasion reached Gowran in 1650, when the town was besieged by Oliver Cromwell. The castle was attacked and badly damaged. For the three hundred years that followed, the Agar family were a major influence in the Gowran area; several generations of them occupied the castle and, like the Butlers before them, many were buried in St Mary's Collegiate Church.

The property passed through other hands on the way. In 1710 Lewis Chaigneau, a Dublin merchant and then owner of Gowran Castle, had the town and the castle grounds surveyed, and the map produced from that survey shows both the castle and the walled town. In 1713 Henry Agar built a new castle close to the Butler one, using materials taken from the older building.

Henry Agar inherited the Gowran Castle estate from his father James Agar in 1733, and through his marriage acquired an interest in the Ellis family's Dublin property on the Liffey between Arran Quay and Phoenix Park, which later passed into the Agar family. He died on 18 November 1746, and the following year his widow Ann advertised the sale of his stock at the castle: sheep, cattle and horses, together with colts and fillies got on mares by horses brought from England. She married again on 20 January 1753, to George Dunbar of County Fermanagh, and died on 14 April 1765; she was buried in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, on 17 April, and administration of her effects was granted to her second husband by the Prerogative Court of Armagh on 11 September that year.

By the end of the eighteenth century much of the Irish aristocracy had moved away and were living in England, following the rebellion of 1798. The building that stands at Gowran today belongs to the years after that. Between 1816 and 1819 Henry Agar, 2nd Viscount Clifden, rebuilt the castle to the designs of William Robertson.

The first Ordnance Survey of Ireland, in 1839, recorded the Gowran Castle demesne at 846 acres, two roods and ten perches. Lord Clifden laid out cricket grounds on the estate at some point after 1840, and the first recorded match there was played in 1842. By 1876 Henry George Agar-Ellis, 4th Viscount Clifden, son of the 3rd Viscount and great-grandson of the 2nd, appears in Griffith's Valuation as owner of 35,288 acres. The Ordnance Survey of 1900 shows the demesne itself at about 1,000 acres, land having been added to the estate since 1839.

The twentieth century took the estate apart. On 19 February 1953 Thomas Derrig, Minister for Lands, was asked in Dáil Éireann by Mr Crotty about the propriety of the Land Commission acquiring the Annaly Estate at Gowran for division, and replied that proceedings were in progress for the acquisition of 774 acres. On 14 May 1957 the Land Commission sold Gowran Castle and about 68 acres to James and Mary Moran, whose family lived in the castle until it was sold in 1998.

The castle and some 65 acres were offered at public auction on 27 May 1998, and were bought from Kevin Fennelly and Caitriona Fennelly, née Moran, by Tarajan Ltd, a company registered in the Isle of Man and owned by the Northern Ireland developer Alastair Jackson. Applications to build houses on the estate followed. Kilkenny County Council refused permission in 1999 for a scheme of 156 dwellings, and refused again in 2004 for a development that would have changed the castle's use to a hotel and added 126 residential units, 23 holiday units and other works. By 2009 the building had stood unoccupied and unprotected for eleven years and was falling into dereliction; the Gowran Development Association and a public meeting on the local area plan both pressed the council about the speed of its deterioration, and a draft plan for Gowran was drawn up.

Fire broke out in the castle on 16 May 2010. The fire services were alerted quickly, brought it under control soon after arriving, and although the damage was considerable the building was saved from total destruction. On 20 December 2010 the council approved the Local Area Plan for Gowran, drawn up in consultation with local residents, which designated the castle and the area around it for tourism and amenity; that ground is also an archaeologically sensitive area. After the collapse of the Irish economy in 2008 the castle portfolio was taken over by NAMA in 2011, and in 2012 NAMA appointed Lisney as receivers and put the portfolio up for sale through Sherry Fitzgerald, with McCreery Auctioneers acting in Kilkenny. The castle was sold in 2013 and restoration work began; it was fully restored between 2013 and 2014.