homes historical roscrea

Joseph Damer of Tipperary was granted the town and lordship of Roscrea in 1722. He married two years later and shortly afterwards built an elegant town house within the curtain walls of the old castle.

Such arrangements were common and later houses were often built beside or attached to the strongholds they replaced. The troubled state of the country meant that the Irish gentry generally found it wiser to live in castles or fortified tower houses until the end of the 17th century.