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Anglo–Norman change and continuity: the castle of Telach Cail in Delbna

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2016

Marie Therese Flanagan
Marie Therese Flanagan*
Affiliation:
Department of Modern History, Queen’s University of Belfast
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Extract

The purpose of this note is to identify the place-name Telach Cail as Castletown Delvin, County Westmeath, and to demonstrate the continued use of the site from the pre-Norman into the post-Norman period. While archaeologists have identified a number of earthwork sites which had a continuous use from the pre-Norman into the post-Norman period, documentary sources may also provide valuable evidence. A combination of near-contemporary pre-Norman and Anglo-Norman documentary evidence indicates that the pre-Norman royal site of Telach Cail in Delbna was chosen for the location of an Anglo-Norman motte.

Type
Articles
Information
Irish Historical Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 112 , November 1993 , pp. 385 - 389
Copyright
Copyright © Irish Historical Studies Publications Ltd 1993

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References

1 The song of Dermot and the earl, ed. and trans. Orpen, G. H. (Oxford, 1892), p. 314nGoogle Scholar; Orpen, Normans, ii, 87.

2 Song of Dermot, 11 3158–60.

3 A Latin text of the charter was printed from a Betham MS in Butler, Richard, Some notices of the castle and of the ecclesiastical buildings of Trim (3rd ed., Trim, 1854), pp 252-3Google Scholar, and an English translation from B.L., Add. MS 4798 in Lynch, William, A view of the legal institutions, honorary hereditary offices, and feudal baronies established in Ireland during the reign of Henry II (London, 1830), p. 150 Google Scholar. The Delvin granted to Gilbert de Nugent was coterminous with the pre-Norman kingdom of Delbna Mór. According to genealogical tradition, the Delbna were of Munster origin. The learned elite were not in agreement about the number of settlements of Delbna outside Munster; it varied between four and seven, but at least three were located in Mide: Delbna Mor, Delbna Bee and Delbna Bethra ( O’Brien, , Corpus geneal. Hib., i, 246, 358).Google Scholar

4 Sheehy, , Pontificia Hib., ii, no. 18aGoogle Scholar. Sheehy took ‘terra Offinelan’ to be Uí Fáeláin in County Kildare, and, following on from that misidentification, Dunecmor as Donaghmore Jago, bar. Naas, and Disserttale as possibly Corbally. ‘Disserttale’ and ‘Dunecmor’, in fact, represent Dysart, alias Dysart Tola, and Ballynacor, par. Killulagh, bar. Delvin, County Westmeath ( Ó Conbhuí, Colmcille, ‘The lands of St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin’ in R.I.A. Proc, lxii (1962), sect. C, p. 81).Google Scholar

5 Dubhagáin, Seaán Mór Ó and hUidhrín, Giolla-na-naomh Ó, Topographical poems, ed. Carney, James (Dublin, 1943), 11 59–60.Google Scholar

6 Ann. Tig:, Chron. Scot.; A.F.M.

7 A.F.M. These annalists consistently replace ‘king’ with ‘lord’ in conformance with their desire to depict the high-kingship as a monarchy of all Ireland. Cf. Ann. Tig., where he is called ‘king of Delbna’, and A.U. and Misc. Ir. annals, 1158,9, 1159,2, which mention him without title.

8 Ann. Tig.; A.F.M.

9 Ibid. References to individuals named Ua Findalláin disappear from the annals after 1174, but in 1230 an unnamed correspondent of King Henry III claimed that he had spent much money in trying to draw various Irish petty kings into the king’s peace, including ‘Odun O’nel, king of Keinel-Owen, who styles himself king of all the Irish of Ireland, M Orayly, chief of Breff and Arth Ononaulin, king of Delvennya’ (Cal. doc. Ire., 1171–1251, no. 1840). The last named was probably an Ua Findallain.

10 Ir. chartul. Llanthony, pp 84–5.

11 Ibid., p. 33.

12 Niocaill, Gearóid Mac, ‘The Irish charters’ in Fox, Peter (ed.), The Book of Kells: MS 58, Trinity College Library, Dublin: commentary (Luzern, 1990), pp 157-8Google Scholar; Notitiae as Leabhar Cheanannais, 1033–1161 (Dublin, 1961), p. 12; O’Donovan, John, ‘The Irish charters in the Book of Kells’ in Miscellany of the Irish Archaeological Society, i (1846), pp 138-9Google Scholar. Neither O’Donovan nor Mac Niocaill identified the ‘king of Telach Cail’.

13 Ormond deeds, 1172–1350, no. 5; Black Book of Limerick, ed. MacCaffrey, James (Dublin, 1907), p. 34.Google Scholar

14 Cambrensis, Giraldus, Expugnatio Hibernica, ed. and trans. Martin, F. X. and Scott, A. B. (Dublin, 1978), pp 52-3, 92–3 and passim.Google Scholar

15 A.F.M., where it is recorded that he was slain on the threshold of the church of Dósert Tola.

16 A.F.M.; cf. A.U., where Ua Caindelbáin is styled ‘king of Laegaire’, and see also above, note 7.

17 A.F.M.

18 A.U:, A.F.M., which has the additional information that it was Muirchertach Ua Briain, king of Munster and claimant to the high-kingship, ‘who delivered Gilla Ossén into the hands of the Uó Laegaire after he had obtained 30 ounces of gold, 100 cows and 8 hostages from them’. A grandson of Mac Coirthén ua Máel Ruain was slain in 1101 while taking part in a hosting led by Donnchad Ua Máel Sechlainn, king of Mide, but he is not specifically associated with Delbna (A.F.M.).

19 In the absence of more detailed genealogies, it is not possible to determine how the Uf Findallain might have been related to the meic Coirthen or whether their emergence in Delbna represented the intrusion of anew dynasty (see O’Brien, Corpus geneal. Hib., 171, and cf. Bk Lec., 220 r a 17, and B.B., 190 r d 34, where the name Findallán occurs). The death of one Cú Caisil Ua Findalláin at the hands of Áed Ua Ruairc is recorded in 1163 (Ann. Tig.; A.F.M.). His forename ‘Hound of Cashel’ may suggest an association with a Munster king, possibly Muirchertach Ua Briain, who as high-king conceivably could have promoted the Uí Findalláin at the expense of the meic Coirthén. Cf. above, note 18.

20 Ir. chartul. Llanthony, p. 40, and cf. pp 41, 83.

21 For a reference to ‘Castleton de Deluyn’ in 1401 see Ir. chartul. Llanthony, p. 138. For a reference in 1337 to ‘Castleton’, almost certainly Castletown Delvin, see Chartul. St Mary’s, Dublin, i, 283. A.U., 1475 records that ‘baile caislein Delbhna’ was burnt.

22 Giraldus, Expugnatio, pp 194–5.

23 See Graham, B. J., ‘The mottes of the Norman liberty of Meath’ in Murtagh, Harman (ed.), Irish midland studies: essays in commemoration of N. W. English (Athlone, 1980), pp 39–56.Google Scholar

24 Cal. doc. Ire., 1171–1251, no. 970; cf. no. 884.

25 Contributions to a dictionary of the Irish language: to-tu (Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, 1948), 376.

26 Telach Cail was a short distance from the early ecclesiastical site of Dísert Tola, which it may be inferred was the principal church of Delbna in the eleventh century, since Coirthén ua MáelRuain, ‘lord of Delbna’, was slain at the threshold of the church in 1034 (A.F.M.). On Dísert Tola see further Gwynn & Hadcock, Med. relig. houses, p. 35. It was subsequently granted by Gilbert de Nugent to St Mary’s Abbey, Dublin (Chartul. St Mary’s, Dublin, i, 105–6, 283–5, 321–4, and above, note 4). In Nugent’s charter granting the church of ‘Dissertale’ and 4 carucates of land to St Mary’s Abbey one of the boundaries of the land is stated to be a duplex fossatum, which may refer to an ecclesiastical enclosure. There are no extant structures or other features now visible at Dysart Tola ( Swan, D. L., ‘The early Christian ecclesiastical sites of County Westmeath’ in Bradley, John (ed.), Settlement and society in medieval Ireland (Kilkenny, 1988), pp 3–31).Google Scholar

27 It is noteworthy that Telach Ard, which, on the evidence of the Kells memorandum, was the pre-Norman caput of the kingdom of Laegaire, was also occupied by the Anglo-Normans in the early stages of the Anglo-Norman takeover of Mide. Ann. Tig. records that Magnus Ua Máel Sechlainn was hanged by ‘the Foreigners of Dublin and Telach Ard’ in 1175 and that in 1176 the men of Airgialla overtook a raiding party of the Foreigners of Dublin ‘and inflicted a slaughter upon them thence as far as Telach Ard and Dublin’. For the suggestion that ‘“castles” of the invaders, of whatever type, may have been planted on top of earlier fortifications’ see Nicholls, Kenneth, ‘Anglo-French Ireland and after’ in Peritia, i (1982), p. 389.Google Scholar