THE IRISH PENNY JOURNAL.
| Number 28. | SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 1841. | Volume I. |
CASTLE-CAULFIELD, COUNTY OF TYRONE.
The subject of our prefixed illustration is one of no small interest, whether considered as a fine example—for Ireland—of the domestic architecture of the reign of James I, or as an historical memorial of the fortunes of the illustrious family whose name it bears—the noble house of Charlemont, of which it was the original residence. It is situated near the village of the same name, in the parish of Donaghmore, barony of Dungannon, and about three miles west of Dungannon, the county town.
Castle-Caulfield owes its erection to Sir Toby Caulfield, afterwards Lord Charlemont—a distinguished English soldier who had fought in Spain and the Low Countries in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and commanded a company of one hundred and fifty men in Ireland in the war with O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, at the close of her reign. For these services he was rewarded by the Queen with a grant of part of Tyrone’s estate, and other lands in the province of Ulster; and on King James’s accession to the British crown, was honoured with knighthood, and made governor of the fort of Charlemont, and of the counties of Tyrone and Armagh. At the plantation of Ulster he received further grants of lands, and among them 1000 acres called Ballydonnelly, or O’Donnelly’s town, in the barony of Dungannon, on which, in 1614, he commenced the erection of the mansion subsequently called Castle-Caulfield. This mansion is described by Pynnar in his Survey of Ulster in 1618-19, in the following words:—
“Sir Toby Caulfield hath one thousand acres called Ballydonnell [recte Ballydonnelly], whereunto is added beside what was certified by Sir Josias Bodley, a fair house or castle, the front whereof is eighty feet in length and twenty-eight feet in breadth from outside to outside, two cross ends fifty feet in length and twenty-eight feet in breadth: the walls are five feet thick at the bottom, and four at the top, very good cellars under ground, and all the windows are of hewn stone. Between the two cross ends there goeth a wall, which is eighteen feet high, and maketh a small court within the building. This work at this time is but thirteen feet high, and a number of men at work for the sudden finishing of it. There is also a strong bridge over the river, which is of lime and stone, with strong buttresses for the supporting of it. And to this is joined a good water-mill for corn, all built of lime and stone. This is at this time the fairest building I have seen. Near unto this Bawne there is built a town, in which there is fifteen English families, who are able to make twenty men with arms.”
The ruins of this celebrated mansion seem to justify the opinion expressed by Pynnar, that it was the fairest building he had seen, that is, in the counties of the plantation, for there are no existing remains of any house erected by the English or Scottish undertakers equal to it in architectural style. It received, however, from the second Lord Charlemont, the addition of a large gate-house with towers, and also of a strong keep or donjon.
From the ancient maps of Ulster of Queen Elizabeth’s time, preserved in the State Paper Office, Castle-Caulfield appears to have been erected on the site of a more ancient castle or fort, called Fort O’Donallie, from the chief of the ancient Irish family of O’Donghaile or O’Donnelly, whose residence it was, previously to the confiscation of the northern counties; and the small lake in its vicinity was called Lough O’Donallie. This family of O’Donnelly were a distinguished branch of the Kinel-Owen, or northern Hy-Niall race, of which the O’Neills were the chiefs in the sixteenth century; and it was by one of the former that the celebrated Shane or John O’Neill, surnamed the proud, and who also bore the cognomen of Donghailach, or the Donnellian, was fostered, as appears from the following entry in the Annals of the Four Masters, at the year 1531:—