Middlemount (part of which is also called Ballyvoghlaun) is a townland in County Laois. Most of the townland (434 acres, including the townland house, ''Middlemount House'') is in the eastern exclave of Coolkerry civil parish. This part is also known as Ballyvoghlaun. The remaining part of the townland (190 acres, including the gate lodge for Middlemount House) is in the arm of Aghaboe civil parish which separate the eastern exclave of Coolkerry from the main, western part of Coolkerry.

Middlemount Moat

The part of Middlemount townland which lies in Aghaboe civil parish contains a

motte A motte-and-bailey castle is a European fortification with a wooden or stone keep situated on a raised area of ground called a motte, accompanied by a walled courtyard, or bailey, surrounded by a protective ditch and palisade. Relatively easy to ...

which, on the Ordnance Survey map, is called ''Middlemount Moat''. It is sometimes called also the ''Moat of Laragh'' or the ''Mote of Monacoghlan''. (The words ''moat'', ''mote'' and ''motte'' are all related; ''moat'', which now means a deep wide ditch, was originally a variant of ''mote, n''^''2'', a natural or man-made mound, from which comes the modern word ''motte''.) Carrigan describes Middlemount Moat as "a truncated cone 16 yards in diameter at the top, 25 to 30 ft. high".

William Carrigan William Carrigan (29 August 1860 – 12 December 1924) was an Irish Roman Catholic priest and historian, who was appointed canon of the Diocese of Ossory. Early life William Carrigan was the youngest of 13 children. He was born in 1860 in Rut ...

The history and antiquities of the Diocese of Ossory, Volume 2
(1905), page 61

References

{{County Laois Townlands of County Laois