placenamesClara
Clárach
Clara Castle preserves domestic and defensive features, with timber analysis refining its chronology.
The name
A reliable full-name meaning has not been established here. The recorded Irish and English forms are given without an unsupported translation.
Recorded forms
- Clárach · Irish · main form · validated name
- Clara · English · main form
Place & story
A defended Shortall residence
The Shortall family built Clara Castle, a five-storey limestone tower house in Clara Upper. Its bawn gained gun loops during a later defensive phase. The northern doorway leads towards stairs and ground-floor chambers lit by narrow openings. The OPW records occupation continuing into the early twentieth century. [2]
Living rooms above the ground floor
The large fourth-floor hall had a fireplace, substantial windows, wall cupboards and a sloping stone surface associated with washing dishes. Smaller chambers and garderobes occupied the wall thickness. The official description cautiously interprets lower rooms as private apartments or bedchambers, distinguishing surviving features from proposed uses. [2]
What the oak beams reveal
Tree-ring analysis dates two first-floor oak beams to trees felled in spring 1523. Other samples yielded approximate dates centred on 1524 and 1545. The OPW uses these results alongside the architecture to support early sixteenth-century construction, with further changes in the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century. [2]
Geographic information
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Clara. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Clara Castle: architecture and dendrochronological evidence · Office of Public Works, Heritage Ireland
- Clara Castle in Clara Upper, County Kilkenny, as photographed in October 2009 illustration: based on a Castles of Leinster: Clara, Kilkenny by Mike Searle. AI-assisted watercolour and ink adaptation; cream paper margins added, incidental clutter omitted and fine details simplified. Licence: CC BY-SA 2.0.
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2025-01-10. How this page was prepared.