Kinnitty Castle and the Bernards
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by Michael Byrne
The Bernard Family
The Kinnitty estate is said to have been sold to the Bernard family of Carlow sometime before 1764. An outline of the family history will be found in Burkes Irish Landed Gentry (1912). The first Bernard in Castletown, Kinnitty was one Franks Bernard born c.1720. His brother, Joseph, also of Castletown died c.1764 and was succeeded by his eldest son Thomas Bernard who married Jane Armstrong (eldest daughter of Adam Mitchell of Rathgibbon and leaving the property to his eldest son Thomas Bernard b.1769 and an M.P. for Kings County from 1802 to 1833 and died in 1844. His son, Thomas Bernard was born in 1816 and died unmarried in 1882. His nephew, Thomas Scrope Wellesley Bernard succeeded to the property. He married in 1880 Monica Gertrude Darby of Leap Castle and died in 1905 leaving four daughters. A sister of Thomas S.W. Bernard, Marguevite Adeline married in 1875 Captain Caulfield French. He died in June 1910 and his wife in July 1910 and on her death the Castle Bernard estate passed in eight shares to the four daughters of Thomas C.W. Bernard - Marguevite [married C.J. Alexander], Monica, Katherine and Maude.
Thomas Bernard M.P.
The government returns of the ownership of land (1876) show Thomas Bernard (he who was born in 1816 and died in 1882) as possessing 13,153 acres of land in Offaly (in freehold) and valued at #6032. The valuation would suggest s rental value of between #6000 and #10000 per annum. As such he would have been one of the leading landowners in Offaly, but inferior to Digly, Rosse, Charleville and Downshire. He was high-sheirff in 1837 at the young age of 21. His father represented the Conservatives in parliament from 1802 until 1833. However, when the franchise was extended in 1832 he lost out and was defeated by the Repealer Nicholas Fitzsimon of Broughal Castle, Kilcormac who secured over 50% of the votes cast in that election. The later Thomas Bernard (son of the M.P.) tried to secure the seat at the 1852 general election but just as his father had been defeated by the enlargement of the franchise in 1832 a similar measure defeated the son in 1852. After the 1832 electoral reform act one in every 83 inhabitants could vote and after the 1850 reform this was reduced to one every 40 inhabitants. Hoppen in his study of Irish electoral practice notes that it was the electorate of 1850 encompassing less than one in twenty of the population and less than one in five adults males that sustained the most important breakthroughs of the Nationalist movement up to and including the Parnellite triumphs of 1882, 1883, and 1884. Perhaps a preminition of this could be seen in the 1852 election in Offaly where tenants, at the risk of eviction, voted against Bernard. Some were, apparently, subsequently evicted (see Shaw Killoughy p.132). Captain Thomas S.W. Bernard contested the division in 1885 unsuccessfully and again in 1886 with the same result.He too was fighting on the extended franchise of 1885, but as a conservative, stood no chance of succeeding.
Kinnitty Castle Bernard
Like many other county house properites in Offaly (excluding Birr and Charleville castles) Kinnitty castle was destroyed during the 'Troubles'. It was burned by the Republicans in July 1992 retreating from the Free State troops and at the same time as the Court-house and jail in Tullamore. The subject of a compensation claim it was subsequently rebuilt, but without the embellishments the old building contained.
Notwithstanding the heavy planting of coniferous trees the castle is still shown to great advantage on the road to Kinnitty.
Antiquities of Kinnitty in the grounds to the front of the castle is the tenth century High Cross believed to depict the presentation in the Temple and the Crucifixion on the east face and Adam and Eve, intertwined birds, interlacing and other geometric patterns on the north and south faces. Behind the castle the south wall of the courtyard is believed to form part of a 15th century church of which some windows remain.
Fleming in his Irish Times article on Kinnitty Castle published in 1940 states that in the great hall of the castle could be seen a horse carved in stone and which was found in 1844 in a large earthen rath or fort in Knocknamon, near Kinnitty Castle.
The stone figure was, apparently, exhibited at the Dublin exbition of 1853 and is said to have caused considerable interest. Its current whereabouts is not known. It is tempting to associate the place-name Kinnitty with Ceann eitigh or the head of a horse but Dwyer in his history of Killaloe diocese suggests that the head is that of Ettagh or Ita, a saint or holy person who lived at Ettagh nearby (p.531). Perhaps she had some association with the founder of the monastery of Kinnitty - St. Finian sometimes called Finan Cam. Little is known of him save that he was of Munster origin. His feast is 7th April. There are a few entries in the annals relating to Kinnitty from the ninth and tenth centuries. In 842 Kinnitty was plundered by the Danes and in 908 Colman abbot of Kinnitty was one of the many Irishmen of note who fell in the battle of Magh Ailfe at which Cormac Mac Cuilennain, king of Munster, was slain. Apparently the abbey ceased to be of importance before the great changes in monostic rule from the mid-twelfth century (for further details, see Gleeson and Gwynn Killaloe, vol. I pp 85-86).
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