Qualla: Castletownroche

Castletownroche: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sarah777, Public domain. On a December day in 1942, a tall, well-built man in his early thirties walked into Castletownroche and gave his name as Oskar Metzke. He told the locals he was a Czech, recently discharged from the British Army on medical grounds. His papers seemed in order. The Garda searched him anyway, which was how they discovered the map with aerial views of the local countryside, the compass, the combined torch-and-fountain-pen, and the Luger pistol. The story of how an axis intelligence operative ended up in a small village on the N72 road, where the Awbeg curves through the Blackwater Valley, is still sung locally - Tim O'Riordan released Oskar Metzke German Spy on his 2018 album Taibhse. It is one of several stories Castletownroche keeps for itself.

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Image: Sarah777 | Public domain

Castletownroche: Cruadha's Fort, FitzGodebert's Rock

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit self, Public domain. The Irish name is older than the English one. In ancient times this place was Dun Chruadha, Cruadha's Fort - the same Dun Chruadha that gave Blackwater Castle its prehistoric foundations. The current name is layered. It begins with Richard FitzGodebert, who came to Ireland with S...

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Image: self | Public domain

Castletownroche: The Bridge by the Mill

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit self, Public domain. The bridge that crosses the Awbeg in the centre of the village was rebuilt in the 1830s. There has been a bridge here for centuries, and one of them gave its name not just to a priory - Bridgetown, downstream where the Awbeg meets the Blackwater - but to a song that is now a coun...

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Image: self | Public domain

Castletownroche: Annes Grove

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Dr Charles Nelson, CC BY-SA 2.0. A mile or so outside the village is Annes Grove, an 18th-century house with gardens laid out in the early 20th century around it. Many of its rhododendrons came from Frank Kingdon-Ward, the plant hunter who collected them on expeditions to Tibet, Burma, and the Himalayan borderla...

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Image: Dr Charles Nelson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Castletownroche: The Spy and the Song

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit david treacy, CC BY-SA 2.0. Oskar Metzke is not the name on his birth certificate. The man arrested in Castletownroche in December 1942 was an axis agent - probably German rather than Czech - and he died shortly after his arrest, in custody, in murky circumstances that local journalist Jim Lysaght later exa...

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Image: david treacy | CC BY-SA 2.0