Magner History, Part 3

The stockade, which lay directly opposite this door was modified to make a stable on the ground floor by removing the vaulting and reducing the walls from the inside to a thickness of 2’6". The west and north walls of the Stockade were re-faced externally with well-chosen courses matching the west wall of the new house. The walls of the stockade were also raised and a wooden floor was put in to make a grain loft or granary above the stables. The castle Keep and the guardrooms were quarters for Calgary troops kept there initially by the new owner while the unit was being stood down.

In AD 1669, Sir Standish Hartstonge, father-in-law of Brettridge’s eldest daughter, was able to return Cloonteens, Knockardsharrive and Coolavalleen to Brettridge’s ownership. In August of the same year, Brettridge’s titles were confirmed by the Restored Charles II as the Manor of Brettridge and the name of the estate was changed to Castle Bretridge. Throughout his long life in Castle Magner, Roger Bretridge proved to be a fair landlord and a progressive farmer. He kept a string of fine hunters at the castle and was a familiar figure traveling on horseback through his farms, monitoring the crops and introducing improved implements and methods of farming. He imposed a strict reformed regime on the local Protestant parish and a succession of clergy from the new Cromwellian settlers in Mallow served there. He implemented the English Parliament’s anti-Catholic proscriptions by applying the law of trespass to exclude the local people from their places of Catholic worship. He went to the extreme of lowering the bed of the river below the castle to deny them access along it to the Holy Well; by a quirk of English law, the bed of the river was excluded form trespass prohibition. With the restoration of the English monarchy, the religious prohibition eased and Brentridge allowed Fr William Sheehan of Killavalig and Fr Owen O’Connell of Kilcaskin to carry out their priestly parish duties under license in the district. He died in June AD 1683 and in his will he funded the Greencoat Hospital Charity in Cork City. The fund was financed by a rental encumbrance on his land in East Drumcummer. It provided an annual grant of about £60 to finance Trade Apprenticeships for the children of needy Protestant ex-soldiers. The balance at 10/6d per week was to provide accommodation for 7 destitute old Protestant soldiers in the City. This charity was eventually set up by his nephew, also Captain Roger Bretridge in AD 1717 and functioned into modern times. He left his estate to his wife Jane Harmby Bretridge who was apparently living with their daughter Elizabeth who was married to Matthew Dean in Cork City. He left a considerable land inheritance to Elizabeth, including Knockballymartin and Posanarna. He had another daughter named Jane who was married to Thomas Badham, also an alderman of Cork city and her inheritance included Clash and Ballyheen.

Jane Karmby-Bretridge died in October AD 1683 and the Castle estate entailed to the under-aged Standish Hardstonge Jr. He was the elder son of Bretridge’s eldest daughter who married Francis Hartstong of Rockbarton near Bruff in County Limerick. Jane Harmby’s un-entailed estate in Rathmaher and Millstreet went to her niece Elizabeth Harmby, daughter of Wilton Harmby or Hornsby, a Corporal with Roger Bretridge in Lord Fenton’s Troop. Elizabeth Harmby was later married to Thomas Purdon of Kilpatrick and from that union many of the Ascendancy families of County Cork claim descent.

In March AD 1689, the Castle was occupied by troops of Lt. General Justin McCarthy and remained in rebel hands until the fall of Limerick. Following the Treaty of Limerick, the Danish regiments of Major General Adam Gravenmoer Van Der Duyn Van Her were in the Blackwater valley to deny any possible Catholic rally to the army of 10,000 Irish troops which was allowed to pass through the area on their way to Kinsale and France from the Siege of Limerick. In October AD 1691, Captain Sir John Jephson of Mallow led a Danish detachment under Major George’s Gravenmoer into the area. They attacked the Castle with a light cannon from across the glen near where Callaghans house now is. The stair turret, gatehouse and much of the castle walls on that side were severely damaged. When the garrison fled, the attackers came in and slighted the Keep leaving only the existing remnant.

After the war, the Protestant Church and parish were restored and the youthful new owner Sir Standish Hartstonge ran the estate through the Bastables. They were a Dublin based solicitor family who came from Kerry a generation earlier with David Power when he married into the Fitzgeralds of Kilbolane. Charles Bastable who died in AD 1728, had a farmhouse on the site of the present Community Hall in Castlemagner and his daughter was married to Nicholas Wrixon of Assolus and Ballygiblin, a progenitor of the Wrixon-Beechers.

In AD 1755 the 2^nd Earl of Egmont leased the Castle and lands as a family retreat. His father the 1^st Earl had renovated Boghort Castle in AD 1715 and members of the extended Perseval families variously lived there. The 2^nd Earl extensively altered the old Cromwellian house and the castle yard in Castle Magner. The modifications to the structure of the house reflected the eccentric character of the Persevals and were carried out mainly in plain yellow Georgian brick interlaid less than tastefully with the well-matched earlier stonework.

The walls were raised a further 4’6" to emphasize the already precipitous drop to the river and glen below the walls. A 12ft triple picture window was built into the north wall and the new structure was topped off with a cambered Georgian roof. To accommodate an external stairs to the stable loft, the entrance door to the house was moved to the extreme southwest corner. The classical portico was dismantled and the pedestals were used to support shelving and a buttress against the crumbling back inside wall of the stables.

The enclosure walls were extended 90ft southward and a Guard Room, 3 coachhouses, stables, a tack room and an arched rear entrance were built into the new south wall. The Castle Field was laid out as a lawn or park and an avenue from an early bridge at Ardoyne led through the park to a new main entrance recessed in the center of the west enclosure wall. The old chapel and guardroom on the left of the new entrance were set out as a gatehouse and servants quarters. The ruined Tower and Keep were made safe with yellow brick facings and the parapets were topped off with the cut stone lintel of Magner’s classical portico. The walls, battery, stairs and doors of the Turret were repaired to make it into a belvedere or folly for viewing over the locality.

In the succeeding years the castle was a pleasant holiday retreat for the many visiting members of the Egmont/Arden family. In the early AD 1800s an unattached lady connected with the 1^st Lord Arden lived there in some style. Charles Lord Arden, brother of Spencer Perseval the assassinated British Prime Minister lived in Loghort Castle and brought many notable visitors to the area. Around AD 1798 A French or Swiss visitor enjoyed the view from the Turret and noted that he had line of sight with Loghort. The visitor spent the night in the house of the tenant who was named Duggan and associated with lands in Assolus. The poet Tom Moore visited Lord Arden at Loghort in AD 1816 and with the Rev. Joseph Cotter he viewed the new Glebe House which he described as a fortress and the castle which he described as a dreary place. Samuel Lewis viewed the castle 20 years later and noted that "it is in ruins and a farmer’s residence for many years." Charles Lord Arden is credited with building the first bridge at Ardoyne and he also provided the Tower and arched Gateway for the new church in AD 1817.

Sir Standish Hartstong had died in AD 1751 and the estate passed to his grandson Henry Hartstonge. The new owner lived mostly in England where he was a popular Boyle-Roche type M.P. associated with the Perseval set and careless of his estate in Castle Magner. He died in AD 1796 AND IN ad 1805 his wife Lady Lucy also died and the estate passed to the husband of Sir Henry's’ niece Sir Edmund Henry Pery. Sir Edmund was a leading Limerick solicitor and politician who later was created 1^st Earl of Limerick. He continued to run the estate as a tenanted farm but took a more business-like interest in the profitability of his estates. Sir Edmund built the present farmhouse in the castle yard to house a tenant named Cornelius Browne recently arrived from County Limerick where his family were rent agents for the Earl’s estate.

The slated roof of the earlier house was re-aligned with the adjacent stables to make a long two-story house lying E-W from the east enclosure wall. The stables were converted to a kitchen with a chimney and fireplace fitted internally. Windows were put in the front and rear walls and the grain loft floor was lowered about 1ft to allow head room for a bedroom on the first floor. A doorway was cut through the 4’ 6" stockade wall to the intervening space leading to the old Cromwellian/Perseval doorway. The space was built-in to make an entrance hallway and open wooden stairs to the first floor landing. The early doorway of Magners Inner Court was modified to make a large front door in the south center of what was not an asymmetrical two-story farmhouse. It was a solid sombre dwelling, void of style and workmanship. It had a kitchen, three bedrooms and a parlor. A back porch was added to the kitchen in the early AD 1930s and the hallway and kitchen roof was a thatch until AD 1955.

The 2^nd Earl of Limerick died in AD 1866 and the property was sold to Sir Henry Wrixon-Beecher of Ballygiblin. The tenant then was Patrick Browne, grandson of the first occupier of the farmhouse. In AD 1903, the Protestant church and graveyard were refurbished through the Beresford Fund endowed in Sir Henry’s will when he died in AD 1893. At the Castle, the Brownes confined the farmyard to the lower part of the castle yard and modified the Postern gate in the north enclosure wall for a new main entrance. The bridle path was enlarged for an approach avenue by the refurbished churchyard to give a pretty, even dignified, air to the whole ancient place.

However, the reprieve was short-lived and when the Browne family relocated to Lisduggan around AD 1907, the castle drifted into irretrievable ruin. In the War of Independence it was a safe arms dump for the volunteers and throughout the conflict they covertly kept a specially trained pony in the glen which was used to pack arms in and out of the dump unknown to the elderly childless couple who lived there and wholly undiscovered by the military. With the Land Act of AD 1923, the lessee Mrs. Brigid O’Flynn nee Browne acquired ownership. She died in AD 1932 and in 1934 the place was sold to Jerh and Alice Sullivan, recently returned from New Zealand. They raised two sons there and lived to a good age, Jerh died in AD 1981 aged 97-years. He had sold the property to a Mrs. O’Regan who had returned from England and she re-sold the Castle and 28 acres to Michael Barry, whose son timothy is the present owner. Ironically, the land had returned again to Barry ownership but now represented by a local farming family whose connection with the parish goes back to the old Magners; time has taken its victory and its prize in a wry closing of the long chapter.

The Magners and their sturdy little Castle belong to history and to times long past. The name of the parish and of the town land is all that remains to mark their passage and the desolate ruins lie in their ivy shroud quietly crumbling to oblivion. 330-years have gone by since the last of their name left the castle and rode out of the life of the parish and its people. Sine fourteen generations of Magners had come and gone there since the founding William reined his heavy Norman house to the cold clear water at Ardoyne after that first thirsty reek by the Blackwater valley. There the succeeding generations survived and prospered through the harshest times with the specters of war and famine for constant companions along the way.

In true Norman style, the Magners became as Irish as the Irish. A dalliance with the New Faith had more to do with keeping the land than with religious persuasion and those who make a semblance of turning, went back to their traditional fold with irreverent haste. The Magners were neither landlords nor superior gentry. No famous General or daring Captain adorned their family tree. They were yeomen historian events which constantly impinged on their daily lives. When the waves of crisis came crashing into their busy work, they passively rode them out and in the aftermath they regrouped to continue as before. The native people of the district shared this common experience and reciprocated the Magners mundane outlook and ordinary way of life. These characteristics of ordinariness and distrust of political campaigning were the corner stones on which the success and long survival of the Magners in Castle Magner were based. In the event, powerful external political influences align to the Magners and their Gaelic neighbors alike, brought about their departure. Its occurrence so soon after the ending of their symbiotic relationship with the Lords Barry Mor found them without the political resource and influences to ride out the great storm. The Kindred Settlement relationship, which brought the Barrys and the Magners together in Castlemagner, was a unique personal bond between overlord and underling. For the Magners and the Barrys it was a bond well-proven for strength and endurance in the end it left the one unable to survive without the other.

The folk tradition of the Magners of the Castle is of a mainly red-headed people of handy build, hardworking and respected, with a concern to keep themselves and their community out of the fatal troubles of their times. No record of their marriage arrangements now survives but other records indicate affinity with the Cotts of Kilmaclenin and Cloyne, the Stapletons of Kilbolane, the Roches of Drinagh and the Callaghans of Clonmeen. When Cromwelliam might finally pushed them out, a succession of English and Anglo-Irish landlords took their place. Each left their mark and remembrance on the people they sought to rule: The alien Bretridge, the absentee Hartstonges, the unstable agent-ridden Persevals, the hard nosed Earl of Limerick (known locally as Lord Limerick) and the haughty Wrixon Beechers. The abiding memory of the Magners is of the life they shared with the local people and their response to a harsh predicament that took another 265-years to resolve. The memory is flavored with a quiet appreciation for their gesture of defiance to the mighty Lord Protector in the prime of his power and in their own and their country’s darkest hour.

The subsequent history of the family is scattered with the Magners themselves among the modern general population. There are occasional glimpses that indicate a healthy survival. John Magner featured as one of the accused in the Doneraile Conspiracy trials of AD 1829. Canon Thomas Magner PP of Dunmanway was an outspoken Nationalist priest who was murdered by Crown Forces after Kilmichael ambush in AD 1920, his brother had also been Curate there. Other Magners have gained prominence in national sporting activities and in the cultural, artistic and general life of the nation.

A sprinkling of Magner descendants are still in the farming and business communities, particularly in Cork and Limerick. The inhabitants of the old parish now are a hardworking and thrifty people, cautious of politics and causes, they are inclined to be progressive and to get on with business of living. The old Magners would be at home in present-day Castlemagner.

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