06 August 2019

Kilduff Castle: ruins
that led to a duel
and a murder trial

Kilduff Castle on the southern outskirts of New Pallasgreen, Co Limerick (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

The ruins of Kilduff Castle form a striking presence on the road into Pallasgreen, Co Limerick. The castle is on the southern outskirts of New Pallasgreen, just off the main N24 road between Limerick and Tipperary.

The castle was built around 1550 by the MacBrien family. When in 1583 Moriery Mergagh MacBrien met his death in 1583 during the Desmond rebellion, he had been living at Kilduff Castle.

Kilduff Castle was held from 1617 until the 1650s by the Hurley or O’Hurley family.

The MPs for Kilmallock in the Irish parliaments of 1585 and 1689 were members of the branch of O’Hurley family that lived Knocklong Castle.

Sir Maurice O’Hurley of Kilduff Castle was prominent in the activities of the Confederate Catholics in 1646. As a result, Sir Maurice O’Hurley and his mother, Dame Lettice Hurley, were transplanted from Kilduff, Co Limerick, to Connaught, where he received 3,500 acres.

After the Cromwellian settlement, Kilduff Castle passed to the trustees of Erasmus Smith charity schools in 1667, and their tenants included the Apjohn family.

Sir Maurice Hurley seems to have regained Kilduff Castle during the Jacobite administration (1685-1690), and in his will, he left his estate, including Kilduff Castle, to his son William. But the castle was probably ruined during the Williamite Wars in the 1680s and 1690s.

The Hurley and Apjohn family contested the ownership of Kilduff Castle into the early 18th century, resulting in a duel in which William Hurley was killed, leading to William Apjohn’s murder trial.

Which may help to explain why Kilduff Castle was never restored or rebuilt, and was left to crumble and decay.

The circular bartizan on pyramidal corbels at the north-west corner of Kilduff Castle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The west and south walls of the tower stand to full height, but the other two walls have collapsed completely, and no floors remain. As many as four storeys are visible as well as the attic, some of the windows in the gables and some of the chimney stacks.

Some fireplaces and garderobes are still visible, as is the circular bartizan on pyramidal corbels at the north-west corner.

The castle ruins are in a perilous state today and are fenced off. But the best view of the castle is found in the car park at the neighbouring Saint Anthony’s Nursing Home.

Kilduff Castle is in a perilous state and the ruins are fenced off (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

The memory of the victims
of Hiroshima demands
Trump is silenced today


Patrick Comerford

Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Irish CND)

Annual Hiroshima Day commemoration,

Merrion Square, Dublin,

1 p.m., 6 August 2019


Today marks the 74th anniversary of the world’s first atomic bombing.

In Hiroshima this morning, they placed a list with the names of 319,186 victims of the bombing inside a cenotaph. This list includes the names of people who died within the past 12 months.

As we stand here today on this anniversary of the Hiroshima bombing on 6 August 1945, the word stands still at a time of growing uncertainty about ever achieving a nuclear-free world.

A landmark nuclear arms control treaty, signed over 30 years ago between the United States and the former Soviet Union, expired last Friday.

The Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF, was an important pillar of nuclear disarmament. But the US and Russia are pulling out of the 1987 treaty, and China, which has never been a party to it, continues to build its nuclear forces unabated.

Today, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, a landmark international agreement meant to prevent the spread of nuclear arms, seems to be in meltdown. The preparatory meeting in May for the treaty review conference next year [2020] failed to produce any concrete outcomes.

As long as there are nuclear weapons in the world, and as long as world leaders threaten to use them, we must continue to remember the victims of Hiroshima, for they are a reminder of the consequences we all face if we fail not only to control nuclear weapons, but to abolish them completely.

When I was on a student fellowship in Japan 40 years ago [1979], I stayed in Hiroshima and met survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings.

But today, the number of survivors of the atomic bombing – as with the number of survivors of the Holocaust – is dwindling rapidly. And in my late 60s, I realise that even the number of people who have met survivors of Hiroshima and the Holocaust are beginning to fade away too.

A count earlier this year showed that 145,844 people are living victims of the Hiroshima bombing, people who hold Atomic Bomb Survivors’ certificates. The number has fallen below 150,000 for the first time since the end of World War II. The average age of survivors is now over 82, almost 83, meaning the hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) are fast aging.

We cannot trust the people who are in charge of the world’s stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Consider the on-again, off-again nuclear talks between President Trump and Chairman Kim. They have all the hallmarks of a teenage romance, on-again, off-again. There are love letters, furtive meetings, promises, hugs, followed by mistrust, name-calling, threats and a messy break-up. Then Trump storms off to flirt with other dictators (such as Putin, and bin Salman). Kim angrily fires off some missiles. The weeks drift by, then both men realise they have something special; they owe it to themselves to give the relationship another chance.

And the world’s nuclear fate lies in the hands of these two lovebirds.

We may ridicule them. But it is not funny.

Indeed, it is frightening.

What is the likelihood of Trump initiating a nuclear strike? He has withdrawn from a key bilateral nuclear weapons treaty with Russia, he has pulled out of the Iranian nuclear deal, he has announced he will increase the US nuclear arsenal.

Yet more Americans have been killed this weekend than have been injured or jailed in Iran all this year … for many years.

He is a narcissist and he is irrational. As Hillary Clinton once noted, ‘A man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.’

We are living in a frightening world. The five permanent members of the UN Security Council are all in possession of nuclear stockpiles: the US, Russia, China, Britain and France.

Forget about Trump’s friends. Who are the friends of the world today?

When I was growing up, we were told: mind the pennies and the pounds will mind themselves.

If we were to apply this to weapons, if someone is capable of dealing with smaller weapons, perhaps – just perhaps – we might be able to trust them to deal with the largest of weapons.

But look at how Trump refuses to accept that there is a massive rise in the number of mass shootings in America.

Statistics last night showed that there have been 246 mass shootings in the US so far this year: we have heard of Dayton and El Paso at the weekend, but another six mass shootings have taken place this month already, with seven dead and 32 people injured.

In terms of weapons of mass destruction, more weapons of mass destruction have been used in America than this year than ever provided the excuses for the war in Iraq.

And still Trump laughs and jokes at a rally when someone suggests shooting immigrants.

His passive encouragement of violence is insidious and is eating away at the fabric of decency throughout the world.

Can Trump be defeated?

Who can rein him in?

Certainly not Russia’s Vladimir Putin or Britain’s Boris Johnson.

Having let Trump know that he was not welcome in Ireland a few months ago, we must now organise to make sure Pence knows he is not welcome either.

Trump and Pence must know that they have no friends here, that they can expect no passive acceptance.

Organisation is essential.

The women who protested at Greenham Common in the 1980s, who occupied the silos and the sites where Cruise and Pershing missiles were to be deployed, were successful.

Their voices, their protests, their bravery, their persistence, also brought about the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.

We need their spirit, their bravery, their resilience, their organisation today. And we need them before it is too late.

The memory of the hibakusha of Hiroshima deserves at least that.

(Revd Canon Professor) Patrick Comerford is President of the Irish Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (Irish CND). He was speaking at Irish CND’s annual Hiroshima Day commemoration at the Hiroshima Cherry Tree in Merrion Square, Dublin, on Hiroshima Day, 6 August 2019.

The Peace Memorial in Hiroshima … the names of 319,186 victims of the Hiroshima bombing were placed inside the cenotaph today

Saint Brigid’s Church,
Dromkeen, and the
all-seeing eye of God

Saint Brigid’s Church, Dromkeen, Co Limerick … built on a T-plan at a T-junction (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Patrick Comerford

During my travels around the country lanes and crossroads of East Co Limerick on the August bank holiday weekend, the second church I visited was Saint Brigid’s Church, Dromkeen.

Two of us arrived by accident rather than plan at this church at a T-junction or crossroads after visiting the Church of Saint John the Baptist, or Nicker Church, which is built into the side of the Hill of Nicker, above the village of Pallasgreen, off the main road between Limerick and Tipperary.

A limestone water font at the front door of Saint Brigid’s Church (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Like Nicker, Dromkeen is part of the cluster of parishes in this part of Co Limerick that are within the Diocese of Cashel and Emly rather than the Diocese of Limerick. It stands at a T-junction, and the church forms a focal point within the surrounding landscape.

Saint Brigid’s Church, built ca 1830, is simple in design and architectural detailing. Although externally modernised, the original form of Dromkeen Church is still visible.

Because of the location of the site at a difficult junction, it is built on a west/east axis, instead of the traditional, liturgical east/west axis.

Inside Saint Brigid’s Church, Dromkeen (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

Inside, the church still has many of its original features, including the fine timber roof structure. Unusually, the church does not have a rear gallery, which indicates its early date.

The church is built on a T-plan, with a gable-fronted, single-bay nave, entrance porches at the transepts and a sacristy extension at the west end.

There are pointed arch openings at the nave, a pointed arch opening at the east (front) gable, and a double-leaf timber battened door under hood-moulding that is flanked by cut and tooled limestone water fonts.

The side porches have square-headed openings with timber battened doors. The church has a timber king-post truss roof, timber altar table and timber furniture.

The two transepts of Saint Brigid’s Church, Dromkeen (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)

In the small surrounding churchyard, a wrought-iron monument celebrating the jubilee year in 2000 bears the original church bell. The design by J Moloney ‘depicts the all-seeing eye of God and all people in the embrace of the Trinity.’

The Parish Priest of Dromkeen is Father Joseph Tynan and Sunday Masses are at 10 a.m.

Across the road from the church, the former Presbytery is a detached, three-bay two-storey presbytery, built ca 1940 and is typical of presbyteries in Limerick and middle-size houses. The flat-roofed porch at the front interesting round-headed windows.

The former presbytery in Dromkeen (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2019)