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Archiver > GENIRE > 1998-06 > 0896744371


From: "Robin McClelland" <>
Subject: Re: Leap Castle; Darby family; O'Carroll
Date: Tue, 2 Jun 1998 00:39:31 +0100


Anne Cropley wrote in message
<>...
>"Robin McClelland" <> wrote:
>>Subject: Re: Castles in Ireland
>>Ellen Naliboff wrote in message <>...
>>>This is as clase as I could find to LEAP.
>>>CASTLES OF LEINSTER: Lea Castle, Laois Ordance Survey map gridN5712
>>
>>Leap Castle is in County Offaly about six or so miles North of Roscrea
>>(County Tipperary) on the main road to Kinnity. It is now largely a ruin,
>>having been destroyed as a habitable building by fire in the 1920s or
'30s.
>>It was originally a stronghold of the O'Carroll family in mediaeval times,
>>and was fought over and passed to the Earls of Ormond at some point. It
was
>>the scene of several gruesome occurrences, including fratricide, and
several
>>bodies have been discovered walled up in parts of it. It acquired a
>>reputation as one of the most haunted houses in Ireland, the chief
>>phenomenon being an apparition something like a headless sheep which
emitted
>>the most appalling smell.
>>In the late 19th and early 20th centuries it belonged to a family called
>>Darby, who were related to me by marriage.
>>It still maintains a very grim and sinister appearance.
>
>Robin:
>
>I don't think Leap Castle, Coolderry, Offaly, ever belonged
>to the Earls of Ormond. It passed from the O'Carrolls to the
>Darbys through the marriage of John Darby, an English officer,
>to Finola O'Carroll, mid-16th century; it was enlarged and
>modernized by Jonathan Darby mid-18th century. The ghost
>was known as "It". There is a printed genealogy of the
>Darby family in Burke's "Irish Family Records" published
>about 1976.
>
>Best wishes
>Anne Cropley
>

-----Original Message-----
From: Anne Cropley <>
To: <>
Cc:
<>
Date: 01 June 1998 12:51
Subject: Leap Castle; Darby family; O'Carroll

>Robin:
>
>I don't think Leap Castle, Coolderry, Offaly, ever belonged
>to the Earls of Ormond. It passed from the O'Carrolls to the
>Darbys through the marriage of John Darby, an English officer,
>to Finola O'Carroll, mid-16th century; it was enlarged and
>modernized by Jonathan Darby mid-18th century. The ghost
>was known as "It". There is a printed genealogy of the
>Darby family in Burke's "Irish Family Records" published
>about 1976.
>
>Best wishes
>Anne Cropley
>

Anne

According to "Castles in Ireland", Brian de Breffny (published by Thames &
Hudson) 1977:

On the site of an earlier stronghold and close to a bivallate prehistoric
hill-fort and near the remains of two ring-forts, a motte-and-bailey castle
and other minor earthworks, the O'Carrolls, Princes of Ely, built their
castle in the fourteenth century. The site that had attracted attention
throughout so many centuries commands the pass from the Slieve Bloom
mountains into Munster. The earliest recorded name of the place is Leim Ui
Bhanain - O'Bannon's Leap; the O'Bannons were secondary chieftains in the
area, subject to the O'Carrolls. It is so mentioned in the Annals of the
Four Masters in an account of the Earl of Kildare's unsuccessful attempt to
take the castle in 1513. Three years later, according to the Annals, the
Earl did capture the castle, and at least partly demolished it. He later
accused Sir Piers Butler of having loaned the defenders of Leap some cannon
to use against him at that time. The destruction cannot have been too
extensive, however, because the O'Carroll was back in his seat in 1557, when
it was besieged and taken by the Earl of Sussex. Internecine struggles
plagued the O'Carrolls throughout the sixteenth century after the death of
Mulrony O'Carroll in 1532. In the bitter rivalry for the chieftainship which
ensued, terrible fratricidal massacres took place, brother treacherously
slaying brother in the castle. At the beginning of the seventeenth century
the agents of the Crown took advantage of this situation to annexe the
territory of the O'Carrolls and subject it to their programme of plantation.

In 1659 the titulado of Leap and the adjacent townlands in the Barony of
Ballybritt was one Jonathan Darby, gentleman. A romantic story (for which no
foundation can be discovered) would have it that a daughter of the O'Carroll
chieftain fell in love with an English captain named Darby who was
imprisoned in her father's castle. She smuggled food to him and eventually
secured his escape. As the pair were creeping out they met her brother on
the narrow mural stair and the alarm was raised. Darby ran his sword through
the young O'Carroll. Then he and the maiden jumped to freedom from the
battlements. Having become the heiress through the death of this brother the
lady brought Leap to the Darby family when she married her English captain.

The Jonathan Darby who held the place in 1659 is said to have been a
Royalist. During the Civil War he is supposed to have hidden his treasure in
the grounds of the castle with the help of two servants whom he subsequently
murdered to prevent them revealing the hiding-place. Be this as it may,
Darby served as High Sheriff for Co. Offaly in 1674 and died at Leap in
1685. His descendants continued in possession. About the middle of the
eighteenth century his great-grandson, another Jonathan Darby, remodelled
the medieval castle, giving it a Gothic dressing. The work included the
windows and the doorway to the old keep, which is from a design in Batty
Langley's Gothic Architecture Restored and Improved, published 1741.

Leap has a great reputation as a haunted castle. The most persistent
elemental with which it is credited is a headless sheep with an abominable
stench who frequents the tower stair. It has also been described as an
evil-smelling creature, half-human, half-beast. The gory events in Leap's
past, the sinister discovery of human bones in a walled-up oubliette, and of
hooks used for executions in an adjacent field known as 'the Hangman's
Field' have all provided material for tales of supernatural manifestations
in the castle. Ghosts or no, there is an undeniable eerieness about the
place. It now belongs to an Australian who plans to restore it; this may
dispel the ghostly incubi.

I was mistaken in saying that it had been captured by the Earls of Ormond -
it was the Earl of Kildare, but the connection with the Earls of Ormond was
Sir Piers Butler (the Earls of Ormond were Butlers). The owner in the late
nineteenth century was yet another Jonathan Darby, whose daughter married
one Edward Minchin, who was a half-brother of my maternal grandfather. My
grandfather spent a night in the castle and, despite the fact that he was a
very down-to-earth person, not given to flights of fancy or to being
susceptible to strange phenomena, definitely experienced "It", and found the
experience most unpleasant.

I don't know what happened to the plans for restoration; when I last saw the
place about five years ago it was still a ruin. Someone had put a corrugated
iron roof over the main keep, but that was all.

Best wishes

Robin McClelland

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