Скачать или смотреть The Old RIC Barracks Ballinrobe

In 1821, they sold their Ballinrobe estate to the War Office (where they were in control of the Irish barracks), so that their castle could be used to extend and enlarge the earlier barracks.


All three Cuffes were said to have the morals of goats. When the board of works finances were scrutinized it was discovered that the accounts had remained unsettled for many years and had been run in a manner ‘criminally negligent if not corrupt’.


Baron Tyrawley (Cuffe senior) was suspected of lining his own pockets, to the extent that ‘from a very moderate beginning’ he had acquired landed property of £10,000 (around a billion Euro in today's money). The Cuffes managed to get away with retiring their posts with compensatory pensions of £400 a year. Eventually they were found to be jointly in arrears to the tune of £27,059 (more than two billion Euro in today's money!) which was secured on their estates, by annual installments of £4,000 together with the proceeds from the suspension of their pensions.


Getting back to the barracks, the old barracks (near High Street) was used for infantry and housed 6 officers and 96 non-commissioned officers and men. Tyrawley's castle was converted to a cavalry barracks, and housed 8 officers, 106 non-commissioned officers and privates, with stabling for 84 horses. The two were linked with a new bridge over the River Robe called the Military Bridge. The land between, the Ordnance Ground, was where military exercises and drilling could be practised.


The armed forces remained stationed in Ballinrobe until their withdrawal in 1926.