Ballyadams Castle

Daniel Byrne-Rothwell wrote to me May 2014, with the following account of his family connections with Ballyadams Castle.....My great-great grandfather, Captain Robert McLean from Scotland, tenanted the castle when it was owned by the Butlers of Ballyadams House. His daughter, my great grandmother, Ellen McLean, was born in the tower in 1841. The Kemmis family foreclosed on a mortgage they held against Ballyadams in the 1840s, and retained the property until it was sold to the various tenants in 1896. As times grew hard, Captain McLean doubled up as gamekeeper to the Kemmis family on the property. When the place was sold in 1896, McLean and his son-in-law, William Shore, formerly of Kilgory, purchased the actual castle and some land around it, which included "The Orchard Field". The place was extremely difficult to keep in repair, and McLean replaced the roof on the old tower with a galvanized one. At the 1896 sale there was an argument between the Kemmis family and the Shores over the furniture in the castle, particularly about an antique clock, a McLean heirloom. Nevertheless, the Kemmises sold the furniture, including the clock, insisting that everything was theirs, and they were too high powered legally to challenge. My grandmother, Ellen Rothwell nee Shore (1883–1980) lived there with her parents and grandfather for a time, but the well was poisoned and the family abandoned it

2010

1911

1882