St. Johns Monastery, Mullinahone, Co. Tipperary South
Behind Michael Cahill's public house, known as Castle View on Carrick Street, stands an imposing medieval hall-house that local tradition attributes to the Knights Templar.
St. Johns Monastery, Mullinahone, Co. Tipperary South
The structure occupies a limestone outcrop that rises a metre above the current ground level, with the remains of a chapel located about 30 metres to the southeast. Built from roughly coursed limestone rubble without any cut stone, this rectangular two-storey building measures 17.30 metres east to west and 13.50 metres north to south externally, with walls 1.5 metres thick above the substantial base-batter.
The hall-house presents a fascinating study in medieval defensive architecture, with its 3.5-metre-high base-batter, though much of this has been robbed out over the centuries. A small square stair turret, now obscured by thick ivy, occupies the northwest corner. Whilst the north, east, and south walls survive to their full height, the western wall only stands to first-floor level, and the southwest corner has collapsed entirely, leaving the upper masonry of the southern wall in a precarious state. The main entrance was positioned centrally in the east wall at first-floor level, accessed through a round-headed doorway with rough wedge-shaped voussoirs that still bear impressions from the wooden planks used during construction.
The interior layout reveals typical medieval construction methods; large round-headed windows illuminated the first floor, which was supported by timber flooring, whilst the ground floor received light through rectangular loops in the north and south walls. Though the interior is now filled with rubble, debris, and dead foliage that obscures the ground-floor masonry, architectural details remain visible. The roof was contained within the side walls, evidenced by an internally projecting course on the upper part of the east wall’s internal face, with three corbels and a line of beam-holes above. Similar beam-holes appear externally along each wall just below the top, indicating where the roof timbers were once secured.





