The beautiful gothic style church was designed by the famous architect Pugin, who also designed the Cathedral in Killarney. The pillars in the church are made from Red Marble which can be found in Lisheenbawn. This Marble was also used in the Honan church at University College Cork.

The Kerryman Thursday, March 29, 2001

Castleisland Golf Course,

Castleisland  Tulligbeen 18 hole golf course is now in its advanced stages and looks set to be up in action by June 2002

The golf course has been causing quite a stir, according to Sergeant Mick Coote, who is involved in the development of the course.

“There was a long list of applications to design the golf course and these were headed by international golfer Darren Clarke following his visit to the area in October 1999.  The people in Castleisland are very interested in the project and 1.25 m of share capital was raised in the autumn of 1999. Everybody who was interested invested £5,000 said Sgt. Coote. The project is also benefiting from the additional £ 150,000, which was received through grant aid. The golf course will be a major boost for Castleisland.

667,500 pounds for Castleisland Library

Restoration of Castleisland cemetery,

A committee has been formed to look after Churchtown Cemetery, Castleisland.

Fr Stack CC Castleisland contacted the NGA last year about this historical burial ground.

Bob Finn, Founder of the Moonlighters, is buried in Churchtown and restoration work was carried out on his grave by the NGA.

An appeal to people who may have family members buried in the cemetery to contact us.

Fr. Stack can be contacted at the Presbytery, Catherine O’Connor, Dooneen, Castleisland, or John Houlihan, member of Church town Cemetery Committee, Currow, Killarney.

The tidy Town committee, formed in 1990, and led by Sheila Hannon.

This year, even more so than last year, a lot of effort has been put into making Castleisland look brilliant. Many hanging baskets and barrels filled with very beautiful flower combinations, new shrubberies at Castleview, College Road, Pound Road, Killarney Road, Convent Street and Church Street.

Mary Walsh, Sheila Hannon and Millie Browne

Another development will hopefully be the  establishment of a play area for children with a fully equipped play ground.

Since 1846, a mill has stood at Tonbwee, Castleisland. Built by Lord Baron Ventry as a flour mill. On the 25th of March 1873, Redmond Roche of Maglass acquired a 98 year lease on the premises at an annual rent of 14 pounds 12s-6d.

In 1926 the mill was reopened as an animal feed manufacturing plant by local man William H.O Connor.

Read all the history: click

http://www.rhyno.pair.com/history.htm 

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 "de Marisco"

The Marsh family held land in the marshes of Somerset -- whence the name -- and were known in England at the time as "de Marisco", Latin for "of the marsh". ("Marris", "Morris", "Morrissey", etc. are variants.)

Richard's nephew, Geoffrey de Marisco, was a first-rate scoundrel among those Anglo-Norman robber-barons who came ostensibly to help Dermot MacMurragh regain his Leinster kingdom. Geoffrey built the motte, or fortified hill, in Hollywood, County Wicklow, to defend his first holdings in Ireland.

Also the nephew of the Archbishop of Dublin, and related to King Henry II, Geoffrey de Marisco was Justiciar (chief governor) of Ireland for eight years between 1215 and 1228. He was thus well placed to grab a good bit of Leinster and Munster for himself, snatching equally from Irish chiefs and fellow Normans alike. He tried to confiscate Terryglass in County Tipperary on the flimsy excuse that the Norman owner had not fortified it strongly enough, having built a stone house instead of a castle.

The fact that a child-king -- Henry III -- was on the throne did not exactly give Geoffrey a free hand in managing the affairs of Ireland, but he took it anyway. One of his tricks was to keep the taxes he collected in the king's name, and spend the money, as one chronicler put it tactfully, "more at his own free will than according to the king's commands." He was eventually sacked. Later, he got caught with his hand in the Church's till in Limerick and was excommunicated.

Geoffrey de Marisco, his son William, and three of his nephews were implicated in a nasty assassination on the Curragh, amidst plots and counter-plots and treachery at the highest and lowest levels swirling as thick as Kildare fog.

On 1 July 1231, "Richard Marshall presented himself to the king as the heir of his brother William Marshall [who had died in early April] ... The king in reply, by the advice of the justiciary Hubert [de Burgh], told him he had heard that his deceased brother's wife was pregnant, on which account he could not listen to his demand till the truth of this matter was discovered." Richard Marshall was then exiled, accused of associating with the king's enemies in France.

In 1234, advisers of the king misled him (in their own best interests) into ordering Geoffrey de Marisco "to seize him [Richard Marshall] if he should happen to come to Ireland, and bring him, dead or alive, before the king". Richard Marshall's extensive Irish holdings were promised as a reward to whoever carried out this task.

On 1 April 1234, Richard Marshall and a handful of men loyal to him, along with his supposed friend and ally Geoffrey de Marisco and his soldiers, were surrounded by the infamous Hugh de Lacy and a large number of knights on the Curragh. The sides were more or less equally matched. Marshall was called on to surrender. Geoffrey advised him against it, and Marshall refused to surrender.

When the fighting started, Geoffrey suddenly remembered: "My wife is the sister of the noble Hugh de Lacy [some historians doubt this], and I cannot fight on your side against him with whom I am allied by marriage." Geoffrey withdrew himself and his soldiers from the battle, leaving Marshall and his men outnumbered ten to one.

Marshall said he would "seem a man of a wavering mind" if he surrendered then, and the battle went on. Marshall killed six of the knights, and the others feared to approach him. They persuaded foot soldiers to maim his horse with lances, pitchforks, axes and halberds. As he lay helpless on the ground in his armour, one of his enemies lifted up his armour and wounded him in the back. He had fought for ten hours.

Marshall was taken to a supposed friend's castle for medical treatment. He recovered enough to walk about and play at dice, but after further "treatment" by a doctor who probed his wounds with a red-hot poker, he died 16 April.

Afterwards, Richard Marshall was proclaimed "The Knight of the Curragh" for his heroic stand. Roger of Wendover says of him, "Amongst the sons of men his person was so beautiful that nature seemed to have striven with the virtues in its composition."

Geoffrey and his son William were at the same time accused of involvement in the assassination and fined for siding with the murdered knight against the king. Both charges seem to have been more or less justified. Afterwards, William began a vendetta that "disturbed the peace and affected the peace of mind of the king himself for many years", until eventually he avenged Marshall by killing the chief assassin.

The de Mariscos were outlawed -- wrongly, I think -- and became pirates on the Irish Sea. They concentrated their depredations on shipping to Dublin and Drogheda, which prompted Dublin to beef up its city walls.

Warning: skip the next two paragraphs if you have a weak stomach.

William was accused -- probably falsely -- of instigating an attempt on the king's life in 1238. The would-be assassin, who accused him, was torn limb from limb by horses at Coventry, then beheaded.

In 1242, William was captured -- undoubtedly through treachery -- tried and condemned. He was then "dragged from Westminster to the Tower of London, and from thence to that instrument of punishment called a gibbet, suspended on which he breathed forth his miserable life. After he had grown stiff in death, his body was let down and disembowelled; his entrails were immediately burnt on the spot, and his wretched body divided into four parts, which were sent to the four principal cities of the kingdom, that the sight of them might strike terror into all beholders. His sixteen accomplices were all dragged through London at the horse's tail, and hung on gibbets. ... And thus, as before mentioned, horrible to relate, he endured not one, but several dreadful deaths."

The 13th-century historian Matthew Paris describes Geoffrey's end:

"About this time [1245], Geoffrey Marsh, a man who had been formerly a noble, and not the least one amongst the magnates of Ireland, who had incurred an indelible stain by the treacherous murder of Earl Richard Marshall, and who was now an exile, and a wretched and proscribed man, having been expelled from Scotland, banished from England, and disinherited in Ireland, after the ignominious death of his son and the loss of all his friends, was himself taken from amongst us; thus finally ending so many deaths by his own."

Uncle Geoffrey's line of male descent died out in the 14th century, and so fell a rotten -- though colourful -- branch from my family tree.

from The Song of Dermot and the Earl, a 14th-century French poem*