Cabra Castle gets green-light on Civil ceremony barn plan

Kingscourt Castle Ltd, the company managing Kingscourt’s Cabra Castle, has successfully applied for permission to construct a new civil ceremony building on-site.

The single-storey barn will be detached from the main castle building and will consist of an event space complete with sanitary and catering services.

The plans also include provision of a service road linking to the existing driveway, and the creation of a landscaped amenity area for guests, as well as all ancillary works.

The proposed development is located within the curtilage of a Cabra Castle, at Cormey, Kingscourt, a protected structure.

Permission was granted with a total of 12 conditions.

In an Architectural Heritage Impact Assessments drawn up for the Corscadden family/ Kingscourt Castle Ltd by Niall Smith Architects, it was stated that a “number of options” had been considered for the best place to locate the new building. But “after much discussion” it was agreed the “optimum location” to construct the ceremony building would be to the rear of the primary castle building on grounds currently utilised as tennis courts and an open green area.

“The building will be fully detached from the main castle building in an enclosed setting utilising existing stone walls and hedges to create an instance sense of settlement,” said the report.

The ceremony building will be a “contemporary barn type structure” with “restrained finesses” that are “complementary but distinctly different” from the castle structure.

“We are of the option that this is the best approach so that the new building stands on its own merit as a new development marking a new chapter in the castles architectural history,” states the report.