The Great Castle Quest

I go in search of Ballyheeney Castle. In preparation, I’ve doubled knotted the laces of my walking shoes and have packed a bottle of water and some snacks. The sun is out. The air is warm. It’s summertime in Ireland.

“The most perfect summer of all time,” one woman told me as we chatted about the weather in passing.

Once already, I’d ducked under the small rope strung between the Ballyheeney Bridge and a tree and gone down to stand at the water’s edge. I’d thought then I could follow the river to the castle (the map I’d taken a picture of from an informational placard in the little village of Clashmore made it look just that easy). But the ground was boggy, muddy, threaded with thorny bushes, and completely overgrown with trees, shrubs, stickery sticks, and big leafed plants. Does Ireland have poison ivy? Did St. Patrick truly drive out all the snakes? Not as intrepid as I’d like to be, that day I’d admired the bridge from river level, thought wistfully of old castles, and then clambered back up to the road.

This day with a fearless spirit and my need for an adventure whistling like a boiling kettle, I head out again. A mile or so down the road, I approach the Ballyheeney Bridge. According to the vague placard map which I consult again from my phone’s photo library as I go, the castle is near the river on the far side of the bridge. The bridge itself is no great monster to cross. It gives dry passage over the Licky River, a decent-fair-sized strand of water that feeds into the much greater Blackwater River which feeds into the sea.

As I near it, a man wearing a hi-vis (high visibility) vest is himself crossing the bridge and coming my way. We exchange pleasant greetings and then I ask, “Do you by any chance know how to see the castle from here?”

“I’m going that way,” he says. “I’ll show you.”

I trot along beside him back the way I’ve just come. We head around a bend and stop to stand at an iron gate that looks out over a field which dead ends into a stand of dark green trees.

“I haven’t looked for it for a couple of years, but I think it’s right in there somewhere.” He points at the trees. “It’s hard to see in the summer when everything is all grown up.”

“If I were to cross this field would that be trespassing?” I ask.

“I think it would be. This is John So-and-so’s land,” he says, giving me the name of the farm owner (which I’ve forgotten). I lean my elbows on the top of the gate and ponder. I keep meaning and forgetting to look up Irish Trespass Laws and Irish Countryside Etiquette.

“If I asked permission, do you think they’d let me see it?”

“They might if you did,” he says. He speaks with a British accent, and is what is called a “blows-in.” Someone who blew in and stuck around.

By this time, we’ve turned back toward the bridge. He’s heading home. And I figure I might as well go all the way to town. Maybe the Heritage Center is open. Maybe the man who runs the little village shop will know the secret to finding the castle.

We chat amiably as go, passing a place called Castle Farm. He tells me that that is John So-and-so’s farm and land. Ah, a literal name. That’s easy. The property gate is open and I make a plan to march through it and ask for castle-viewing permission on my return trip.

It’s warm. I wipe some sweat off my face and match my steps to the man’s. After we’ve trudged up a hill, he stops, points over to the right, and says, “There’s an old lime kiln.” The lime kiln was also marked on my placard map and I’d planned to see it. I’d figured it would be easier to find than the castle being just off the road as it was (according to the vague placard map). I was wrong about that. Not so easy. It’s greatly camouflaged by ivy and leaves and trees and shrubbery. A tiny bit of stone peeks out. I would have mistaken it for a wall. However, now that I know what I’m looking at I can see that next to the peeking stones, covered by hanging strands of greenery is an inset kiln, taller than I am and who knows how deep. I would never have known that that was it without this local help. I mentally check the lime kiln off my list of things to see and we carry on.

The Lime Kiln Covered in Greenery

When we get to his street, my new friend invites me in for tea. Well, why not? I had only this morning thought to myself that I needed a friend or two to make my months in the Irish countryside a bit more fun and a bit less like a stint alone in the wilderness.

My friend puts the kettle on and I stay and visit for a few hours (What is tea etiquette? When are you supposed to leave?). I leave with us having made tentative plans to take a walk one day with the end goal of trying to find the Ice Houses (also marked on the vague placard map). My friend thinks he knows the way.

When I get back to Castle Farm, the gate is closed. It’s early evening. I don’t know if the closed gate means everyone is home for the night or if it means everyone is gone. Having had an adventure, having made a friend, I’m happy enough for the day. I’ll save the castle for another time.

A day or so later, after I’d asked if she knew anything about it, and after I’d told her I planned to walk to some nearby points of interest (castle included) with only a screenshot of a vague placard map as my guide, my host’s mother loans me some ordnance maps and I take a picture of the relevant parts with my phone’s camera. The castle is marked by a small red dot. It’s labeled, tellingly enough, on the map as Castle. I study the map to get my bearings. There’s the fork in the road leading to the gate where my friend and I had stood. There’s the Ballyheeney Bridge. There’s the tiny line leading the way along the river to the castle. I can follow a map. I mean, really, how hard can it be to find a castle?

In the meantime, it rains several days in a row. I get some writing done. On the next sunny day, I decide that, by gosh, by golly, I’ll find that Ballyheeney Castle.

All set, I have my shoes tied, my water bottle filled, snacks packed, and my vague placard map and the ordnance map saved on my phone.

The miles fall away beneath my feet. I walk across the bridge and over to Castle Farm. The gate is once again closed. I don’t see a way to open it or to ring in. So I walk to Clashmore. The Heritage Center is closed. So I go to the little shop across the street. As I pay for some bananas, I ask the shop owner about the castle. I show him my maps.

I ask him something about trespassing or permission and he says, “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than for permission. It’s not like they’ll shoot you.”

“Good grief, I hope not,” I say.

Thus encouraged, I take my change, pack my bananas in my bag, and tell the shop owner thanks.

The Castle Farm gate is still closed. The gate looks forbidding. The farm buildings are far down the lane. They won’t shoot me, I think. But I’m not quite game for climbing this fence. I glance across the street to another little house and wonder if it’d be less frightening to ask there.

Undecided, I stand for a minute, looking at my maps. Then I look more intently at the ordnance map. It shows a line—that has to be a road, or at least a path. Doesn’t it? There’s the river. There’s a road. That road leads to the castle.

A short way from Castle Farm, and not quite back to the bridge, there’s a gated lane. This metal gate is less forbidding. It isn’t padlocked shut. It isn’t even tied shut. It’s just pulled in and held closed by the growing flora beside it. Mustering my daring, and practicing some words for forgiveness in my head, I open the gate, slide past it, close it behind me, and walk down the lane.

At just about the point that I feel the castle should be somewhere near, I reach the end of the lane and come smack up against a large building. It’s obviously some kind of place for cows as evidenced by the abundance of cow patties sliming the cemented ground.

To venture further feels very much like trespassing. It feels very much like a good way to get ambushed and run over by crazed cattle. Maybe even very much like an opportunity to be shot.

But! I’m so close. I know I am. I turn away from the building and look down the green field that leads to the river. If I could get to the river and follow it from here, surely, I’d find the castle. That’s what my map promises. It’s worth a try. I trip my way across boggy, uneven, cattle plodded grass. I step over a wire fence, avoid a patch of brambles, and stand at the edge of the river. There’s no way to follow it. I’d have to walk in the water itself, squelch through the ankle-deep mud of the bank (are Irish river bogs like quicksand?), or whack my way through the stickery under-and-overbrush. For that, at the most I’d need a machete, at the least a hardy walking stick.

Chiding myself, mocking myself even, for my lack of fortitude (I don’t want to get my shoes muddy. I don’t want to be scratched to death by brambles. I don’t want to get eaten by giant spiders), I concede defeat. I step through the mud, trip my way back across the boggy, uneven, cattle plodded grass, and return to the lane.

Having retraced my steps, I let myself out again through the gate and close it behind me. That’s it then, is it? All that’s left now is to go on home again.

From the road, as I look up toward Castle Farm (wistfully), I see a tractor trailer in front of the gate. A delivery! Which probably means that someone is home.

I walk back up the hill.

The truck driver is sitting in his truck, his young grandson is in the seat next to him. I talk at the driver through the window, asking him if he knows anything about the castle. He admits he’s heard about it, but that’s it. After making a call, he climbs down and we stand together at the forbidding gate. As we wait for someone to open it for him so he can make his delivery and get on about his day, we chitchat about the weather, about places we’ve traveled, about where we’re from.

Then. Like a miracle. The gate opens. Seizing the moment, I walk through as the driver maneuvers his truck in and begins his slow progress down the forbidding farm lane. He says something to me over the rumble of the motor as he goes by and I say, “I’ll just follow along behind you.” He drives on. The gate closes behind us and suddenly I wish I was in the cab with the driver and his grandson.

The farm seems quiet. No cows hustling around. No people working. Not even a dog.

Not even a dog until I’ve followed the truck all the way in (past signs that say Authorized Access Only that bring me up short and nearly turn me back). Having reached the end of the lane, the truck driver gets down and says, “Might be someone in the house there,” as we both say hello to the large, black dog that comes to sniff our hands and ask for a pat on the head.

Having made it this far, I bid the truck driver farewell and walk to the house.

Taking in a breath for courage, I ring the doorbell.

A moment later, it opens.

I smile. “I’m sorry to bother you,” I tell the lady. “I heard there’s a castle nearby and I was wondering if it’d be okay for me to see it.”

“There’s nothing to see,” she says.

“Oh,” I say. I stumble out a few nearly incoherent sentences sounding probably something like, “I thought it’d be interesting to see if there was something there. I saw it on the placard sign at the edge of Clashmore. I guess if there’s nothing to see, there’s nothing to see.”

“It’s just one wall.”

“Oh, okay,” I say, and still I chatter on about not wanting to trespass and thanks anyways and sorry to bother you when she steps outside and says, “It’s just a wall.” Going fast, she leads me through some cow buildings (a milking facility?) and soon enough we emerge on the other side. “That’s it,” she says, pointing across the way to a crumbled down, ivy-covered wall.

The castle!

I ask if it’s okay to take pictures and how I should leave the property when I’m done. She says, pointing vaguely, that I can go through that gate there and the lane beyond it will take me toward the bridge.

“That’s exactly where I need to go.”

Without any more ado, she hastens off and I clamber over some rocks, across the field, and make my way to the last wall of this castle.

As I walk up to it, I’m delighted by success. It might be only a wall, but I’m seeing it.

As I inspect the sheen of spiderwebs and the old stone and the ivy, I wonder about its history. I don’t know if it’s as old as the 12^th Century or as new as the 18^th. I don’t know if to the Irish it represents all the bad parts of their history, all that they fought so long and hard to be independent of. I don’t know anything about it. Even the website I’d found that proclaimed the charms of Clashmore said, “The history of the castle is vague.”

 

The castle itself is vague, I think.

I take some pictures. I walk through the one open doorway. I gaze through the open windows and see the dark green of trees. I note that from the side facing the river the castle wall looks like a giant mass of ivy, like a dark set of trees. Even if I’d followed the river, would I have recognized that as a castle? Would I have recognized it as a wall? I don’t know. Maybe not. It certainly is The Hidden Castle.

When I’ve appreciated all that I can, I bid the castle farewell and exit through the gate the lady had shown me. I walk across a cow pattied slab of concrete—the same one I’d approached earlier from the opposite direction and been too shy to cross. Wow, I think, I’d gotten so close on my very own. Thoughtful, elated, I make my way back down the quiet lane for the second time this day.

Back on the road, I cross the Ballyheeney Bridge.

The air is warm. The day is sunny. It’s summertime in Ireland. I swing my arms. When I get there, I stop at the iron gate my friend and I had stopped at the other day. I lean my elbows against the top of the gate and gaze into the trees. There’s no way to distinguish the wall from here.

But I was there, I think. I saw it. I conquered the castle. Happy as the proverbial lark, I walk back home.

*Information regarding Ballyheeney Castle is very sparse.

The aforementioned Clashmore site (http://www.discoverclashmore.com/history.html) says this: “Set back on the right hand side a few hundred yards beyond Ballyheeney Bridge is the ruin of a notable fortress known as Ballyheeney Castle which was likely a Norman Tower-House and was reputedly built by a person named Sineach Ruaidh. The history of the castle is vague but latterly it was certainly a stronghold of the Desmonds and in particular was in the ownership of Gerald (Gerrot) Fitzgerald during the 16th century, who was a son of the 3rd Lord of the Decies, Dromana. Records also show that for long periods of time it was in the ownership of the powerful Ronayne family who presided at D'Loughtane House.
A local Seanachai claimed that the castle of Ballyheeney was once owned by an O'Heeny woman who, for her fortune, left a daughter an old horse's skin and as much land as it would cover or enclose. The quick witted daughter cut the hide into thin strips of which she made a rope long enough to enclose the entire townland of Ballyheeney, which thereupon became her property, all 381 acres of it!”

And another site (http://snap.waterfordcoco.ie/collections/ebooks/99755/Ordnance%20Survey%20Letters.pdf) has this tidbit: “On the Townland of Ballyheeny in this Parish is the south wall of a castle but the foundations of the other walls are not traceable. This wall is thirty five feet in length seven feet six inches in thickness and about forty feet in height and well grouted. It is said to have been built by a [170] person of the name of Sineach Ruadh but nothing is remembered of his period or history.”