His Castle Nigh Timolege

Repeating research isn’t always a waste of time, especially if you have new information.

Using the Down Survey and the Books of Survey and Distribution allowed me to identify what townlands Major John Allen was awarded after the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland, but not the exact location of his home, which was identified as Boalnamore House in a transcription. I had a general area and the clue that John lived five miles closer to Bandon than William Morris did, but this discription is a little vague and led to more questions: Was it exactly five miles closer? What road(s) were being measured? Are the roads the same today as they were in 1680? (Probably not.)

Remembering the coordinators advise to revisit previous research, I set out to see if I could locate some record of Martha’s, John’s daughter, marriage to Thomas Knight of Bandon. When I first found the transcription, I reached out to local and national libraries, repositories, and historical groups to try to locate the original document and identify the place John lived. No luck.

The transcript provided a marriage date, so I went to the Quaker records in FindMyPast that I used to identify some of Martha and Thomas’ children and other relatives to do a line-by-line scan of the register. To my delight, I found Martha and Thomas’ marriage entry squeezed in between two other lines:

“Thomas Knight of Bandon took to wife Martha Allen daughter of Major [John] Allen in a Meeting at his Castle nigh Timolege.”

A castle near Timolege (today Timoleague)!? John’s lands were close to Timoleague, a port village, and calling his home a castle led to information about tower houses in County Cork. Tower houses were usually called castles in the 17th century. The only tower house within John’s lands was Ballinoroher Castle, built before 1601 by the MacCarthy family. The distribution books show that the tower house’s townland was previously owned by Donogh McDaniell Carthy and much of that townland went to John.

https://virtualtreasury.ie/item/NAI-QRO-1-1-3-6-18 > image 25.

The tower house has an interesting history that furthered helped identify it as John’s home. More about that soon.

Next time more about the five mile detail…

Sources:

  • “Books of Survey and Distribution: County Cork: East and West Carbury Barony,” Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland (https://virtualtreasury.ie/item/NAI-QRO-1-1-3-6-18 : accessed 27 Aug 2024), image 25, Templeomalus Parish, entries for Major John Allen; imaged from Thomas Taylor, Books of Survey and Distibution (Quit Rent Office Copy), 1759; QRO 1/1/3/6/18; National Archives Ireland, Dublin.
  • “Ireland, Society Of Friends (Quaker) Browse,” FindMyPast (https://search.findmypast.com/record?id=IRE%2FQUAKER%2FQM11M-1%2F0014&parentid=IRE%2FQUAKER%2FQM11M-1%2F0014 : accessed 27 August 2024) > year = 1650, archive = Religious Society of Friends > Munster Family Lists 1650-1876 > image 15 >  Knight-Allen marriage, 3 October 1682; imaged from Munster Family lists 1650-1876, Munster vol. 39, Religious Society Of Friends In Ireland Archives, Dublin. The entry is squeezed between two other entries and is not indexed.
  • Abstracts of the marriage certificate and wills of Thomas Knight and Martha Allin; typed page, sent by M.G. Haughton, keeper of records, Friend’s Meeting of Cork, Ireland, to Florence C. McCarthy, dated 30 January 1928; image scanned and posted by user “alisa corbett” (Mrs. McCarthy’s granddaughter) to Ancestry.com, 3 July 2016 (https://www.ancestry.com/mediaui-viewer/tree/34614813/person/350112803765/media/3e1bc0cb-2f65-48f3-9d66-8535bafe277e?usePUBJs=true : accessed 9 September 2020).
  • Mark Wycliff Samuel, The Tower Houses of West Cork: Appendices (PhD. diss., University of London, 1998), 595; digital file, UCL Discovey (https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1317856/2/287930_Vol_2.pdf : accessed 31 Oct 2025).
  • Julie Medlock Flake, “Finding the Home of John Allen (d. bef. 1692) in County Cork, Ireland,” proof argument, 2025; held by author.