Tower Hill Wood Walks, Portlaw

Did You Know

• Le Poer Tower: A 21m high folly built in 1785 by the first Marquis of Waterford, George De La Poer Beresford, second Earl of Tyrone, in memory of his son who died in a horse-riding accident. A spiral stairway with 92 steps leads to the top of the tower. These steps are said to have come from the ruins of Clonea Castle. The area is reported as being the site of a C18th hedge school. The inscription on the tower reads: “Le Poer Tower, erected in the year 1785 by George, Earl of Tyrone, to his beloved son, his niece and a friend.” The friend referenced is thought to be Mr. Charles Poliere de Botens, the boy’s tutor at Curraghmore, who died a short time after his pupil’s death.
• Jock the Charger: The Marquis, during the 19th century served with the 8th King’s Royal Irish Hussars. He had a horse called Jock the Charger that he used during military battles. When Jock the Charger died, the Marquis was so attached to the horse, and held it in such high esteem, that he buried the horse at the Hussian Gap, inside the boundary walls of the woods.
• Boundary Famine Walls & Black Door: There is evidence of delightful stone boundary walls around the route which predate much of the woodland which would have been part of the Curraghmore Estate. The Tower Hill Wood range is known locally as the Black Door due to there being an old wooden door entrance to the woods on the Scrouty Road boundary walls.
• Clonagam Church: The parish church of Clonagam is situated on a southwest facing slope of Tower Hill over-looking Curraghmore Estate, only a short distance from the southern extent of this trail network. The present Church of Ireland church was built in 1741 by Marcus Beresford (1694-1763), ‘Earl and Viscount of Tyrone Baron Beresford and Baronet’, representing an important component of the eighteenth-century ecclesiastical heritage of County Waterford. Renovated in 1794 it was erected on the site of an older foundation which is no longer visible at ground level.