placenamesKnockbrit
Cnoc an Bhriotaigh
Knockbrit's architectural record includes a former constabulary barracks and nearby Mobarnan House, where successive rebuilding and a local legend survive together.
The name
These Irish name elements are associated with this record in the Logainm glossary.
An element’s translation is a clue, rather than a complete explanation of the name. Its form and meaning depend on local history and the full Irish name.
Recorded forms
- Cnoc an Bhriotaigh · Irish · main form · validated name
- Knockbrit · English · main form
Place & story
The barracks at the crossroads
Knockbrit's former constabulary barracks occupies a prominent crossroads site in Mobarnan townland. The National Inventory of Architectural Heritage dates the two-storey building approximately to 1880. Its hipped slate roof has broad overhanging eaves and brick chimneys. At the time of the 2005 survey, it retained timber sash windows, bars on the ground-floor openings and timber boarded doors, preserving features of its earlier institutional use. [2]
Three periods within Mobarnan House
Nearby Mobarnan House incorporates several distinct phases. The architectural survey identifies a probable medieval tower house within its older eastern section, a three-storey block dating to 1734, and a two-storey front added approximately in 1820. Interior features include an eighteenth-century staircase and decorative cornices. The associated farm buildings include a watermill which, according to the survey, supplied electricity to the property. [3]
The story of the departing crows
Mobarnan was a seat of the Jacob family. The architectural inventory connects a member of that family with the jury which convicted Father Nicholas Sheehy in 1766. It also records a subsequent tradition that the house was cursed and that crows left, never nesting there again. This is an attested story associated with the place; the account of the birds is not presented as an independently verified event. [3]
Geographic information
- Place type
- Population centre
- County
- Tipperary
- Barony
- Middlethird
- Civil parish
- Magorban
- Coordinates
- 52.50222, -7.74963 (approximate)
- Logainm ID
- 1414528 ↗
Sources & further reading
- Logainm.ie — Knockbrit. Place names and geographic record, licensed under CC BY 4.0.
- Knockbrit Constabulary Barrack, Mobarnan, 22206208 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
- Mobarnan House, Knockbrit, 22206207 · National Inventory of Architectural Heritage
Name record retrieved 2026-10-25 · Source record modified 2012-02-13. How this page was prepared.