Ballyadams Castle

Ballyadams Castle stands in Ballyadams, Ireland; it was erected by the Gaelic O’Mur (O’More) clan. One account names Adam O’Mur as the builder and places the tower on the site of an earlier Norman stronghold, and the castle’s name has been linked to the Irish phrase meaning the town of Adam.

The tower first took shape in the fifteenth century under O’Mur control. In 1534 the castle was taken by Geraldine forces during the uprising led by Thomas FitzGerald, tenth Earl of Kildare, commonly called Silken Thomas. Two dozen years later, in 1546, the Lord Deputy of Ireland and the Earl of Desmond marched into County Laois with a large army and captured Ballyadams as a reprisal for a rebellion led by Gilla Patrick O’Mur; during that same disturbance members of the O’Mur and O’Connor families seized the town and monastery of Athy.

In 1551 the property passed into the hands of John Thomas Bowen, also known as John Pike. His son Robert Bowen inherited the castle in 1569. A church was erected beside the castle in 1631 dedicated to the memory of Robert Bowen, and a monument memorializing him takes the form of a sculpted gravestone slab. The castle endured siege and fighting in the upheaval of 1641.

Ownership later moved through the Bowen family. In 1700 Catherine Bowen brought the property into the wider Butler family through her marriage to Piers Butler of Tipperary. A visitor in 1782, Austin Cooper, recorded the building as already fallen into disrepair and at risk of collapse. The Butler family stopped living in the castle after it was attacked by rebels in 1798. During the nineteenth century the castle was leased by Robert MacLean, whose household carried out partial repairs and fitted a new roof. Reports from 1896 note that the property had been sold and was afterwards let to various tenants. In the twentieth century Ellen Rothwell, née Shore (1883–1980), lived at the castle before it was again left empty. The present owner is David Butler, recorded as a direct descendant of Piers Butler.