Mount Bruis is remembered for two things it may never have had: 365 windows, one for every day of the year, and a secret vaulted room full of gold sovereigns. Both are folklore, repeated for so long that they have become the whole point of the place. What actually stands on the hill above Shronell, off the R515 west of Tipperary town, is the roofless ruin of a mid-18th-century mansion, its well-proportioned façade still carrying a decoratively-carved limestone doorcase.
Who built it
Local tradition ties the house firmly to the Damer family. Joseph Damer, an English-born banker, bought up large tracts of Tipperary from Cromwellian settlers after 1662 and grew rich exporting wool – though by every account he was a miser. Jonathan Swift wrote that he ‘walked the streets in a threadbare cloak and dined and supped at charge of other folk’. When Joseph died unmarried in 1720 the fortune passed to his nephew John, and the story goes that in 1740 John built the great house at Shronell and named it Mount Bruis.
The written record is less tidy. The architectural inventories date the house to the mid-18th century and name its occupiers as the Doherty and Scully families – Edmond Doherty Esq lived here through the 1770s until his death in 1809, Edmund Scully in 1814, and a Mrs Doherty by 1837 – without confirming the Damer link at all. By 1840 the Ordnance Survey Name Books called it ‘a very old building and in middling repair’. Take the Damer legend, then, as a good story rather than settled fact.
Legend and folklore
The 365 windows are almost certainly an exaggeration of a genuinely large house, but they fixed its reputation for grandeur, and the hidden treasure has never been found. Local tradition also recalls the blind 18th-century poet Liam Dall Ó hIfearnáin, who is said to have prophesied that the Damers would not endure in Shronell while the native Heffernan (Ó hIfearnáin) family would – and in time the Damer estates did slip away.
What is on the hill
The climb rewards you more for the outlook than the stonework: the Golden Vale opens out below, with the Galtee Mountains on the skyline on a clear day. Photographers tend to come at golden hour, for the gable against a low sun. In the same townland there is a moat – a flat-topped mound about sixty feet high and a hundred feet round, with the remains of an old castle on top. The ruined Church of Ireland at Bruis, built around 1808 with its tower added in 1818, and traces of Damer’s Court behind Shronell National School round out the area’s history.
Walking and access
Mount Bruis is reached off the R515 west of Tipperary town. Pull into the small lay-by and take the short, unpaved track up the hill – about half a kilometre, manageable for most people, though the last stretch is uneven and the stone gets slippery after rain, so wear proper footwear. Parking is free, there are no set hours and no charge, and dogs are welcome on a lead.
Practical information
- Admission: free
- Opening hours: open year-round, no set hours
- Facilities: none on site; toilets and refreshments are in Tipperary town, a short drive away.
- Note on the name: do not confuse this ruin with Mount Bruis National School, in Tipperary town, which is unrelated.
Nearby attractions
- Rock of Cashel – the great medieval ecclesiastical site, roughly 20 km away.
- Cahir Castle – one of Ireland’s best-preserved Norman castles, to the south-east.
- Arra Hills and the Devil’s Bit – walking country to the north.
It is a twenty-minute stop rather than a destination, best folded into a wider Tipperary heritage run. Go in the last hour of daylight and the gable earns its photograph.