Clonony Castle County Offaly.

Clonony castle rising to a height of fifty feet is built on a limestone outcrop, is regarded as the finest of the many castles built by the MacCoughlans who held other castles at Banagher, Cloghan, Coole, Kilcolgan and Raghan, it is possible they had castles at another ten sites.

Close the the castle entrance in a cave is a large limestone tombstone to Elizabeth and Mary Boleyn, cousins of Anne Boleyn wife of Henry VIII who bore him a daughter who was to become Queen Elizabeth I. Anne was beheaded in the tower of London in 1536 because of her inability to provide Henry with a male heir. She was charged with treasonable adultery with five men, as well as sexual deviation, and suspicion of being a witch.

The MacCoughlans lost the castle in the 1620's and it was granted to one Matthew de Renzi who was born in Cologne, moved London and then to Ireland. Renzi appears to have adopted at least the Irish language, because his tombstone in Athlone states that he wrote a dictionary in Irish.

The 1830's saw the castle in the hands of a barrister Edmund Molony, as one would expect he was a man of many words. Upon the death of his wife in January 1839 he erected a memorial to her at St George's Chapel London where she was interred, the epitaph ran to over three hundred words and included the following lines.

She was hot, passionate and tender,
A highly accomplished lady,
And a superb drawer in water colours.