A key document in the story of Sir Walter Raleigh’s colony in North America is the 1593 letter sent to the chronicler of English exploration, Richard Hakluyt. The information it contained comes to us only in the version published by Hakluyt in 1600, but we must assume that his editing left it substantially correct. The letter writer was John White, who had worked for Queen Elizabeth’s Serjeant-Painter, drew remarkably detailed water colors of the native flora, fauna, and people of modern-day North Carolina. His voyage there in 1585 so impressed him that three years later, he sought Raleigh’s permission to send a group of civilian families to colonize Virginia, as Raleigh had named the new English possession. White would be the second governor of Virginia, following the 1586 departure of the first governor, Sir Ralph Lane, and his exploratory band of soldiers and scientists.

The letter contained an account of White’s 1590 voyage to America, in hopes of reaching the colony he had left in 1587 to bring badly needed supplies for the fledgling colony. But the Spanish Armada’s assault on England the next year had brought a halt to all shipping, so White resorted to transport on a privateering voyage to the Caribbean. He found no colonists on Roanoke Island, and until recently the mystery of the Lost Colony remained unsolved for four hundred years.

White’s letter also gave his location: “I take my leave from my house at Newtowne in Kilmore.” The exact location of his house has long puzzled historians, who assume that it was in the colonized region of Munster in southern Ireland. Queen Elizabeth had given Raleigh a huge estate of several thousand acres there, and he and others from her court had sent English families over to farm the land and populate towns. Unfortunately, there are more than one Kilmore in Munster. David Quinn thought that White’s house may have been in north County Cork, a few miles from Kilcolman Castle, where Raleigh and Edmund Spenser entertained one another with poetry. William Wallace, however, deduced that Newtown was in Irish “Ballynoe” and found one near Raleigh’s lands in southeastern County Cork. Local archaeologist, Eamonn Cotter, however, argued that there was no other example of the Irish renaming an English place. He thought that White must have lived in the Newtowne townland near the “wood of Kilmore” townland in the barony of Orrery and Kilmore in north County Cork.

But none of these locations can be tied directly to Raleigh, who distributed properties from his own holdings to his supporters. As these were all located along the Blackwater River with the port of Youghal at its mouth, it is reasonable to assume that White’s house stood nearby. Thus, a search of townlands (sections of an Irish rural parish) near two of Raleigh’s men’s riverside holdings, Thomas Harriot’s Molana Abby and William Floyer’s Templemichael, yielded a Newtown townland immediately to the west. Newtown House, a farmhouse-turned-Georgian villa, could have held the clues to White’s location. Careful architectural examination by Dr. Carter Hudgins and myself revealed many phases of construction, but nothing dating to the 16th century.

The search moved north to a Kilmore townland lying on the north slope of the high ridge that separates the Cork coastal plain and the river valleys of the interior. This Kilmore looks down upon the river Bride, a Blackwater tributary. Again, Kilmore House and its lands contained nothing earlier than the 19th century. But across the road, which was constructed in 1778 to connect more directly the town of Tallow on the river Bride with the larger Youghal, lie two stone buildings. One is Kilmore Cottage, which the Irish government’s National Built Heritage Service lists as a 19th-century “Fever Hospital.” The other is a two-story Almshouse, erected in 1830. Neither could claim to be White’s House.

Further study has continued to blend cartography and archival research. In 1602, Raleigh sold off his Munster estates to Richard Boyle, an Englishman in Elizabeth’s Irish government. This was because in 1598, Hugh O’Neill, Earl of Tyrone, invaded Munster, and with local forces, had driven out nearly all English households, their livestock taken and their homes destroyed. Only a few castles and the walled cities provided safety for the refugees, who soon returned to England. After carrying news back to the Court, Edmund Spenser, broken and destitute, died on a London street. But Boyle stayed on and eventually prospered. Becoming one of the wealthiest men in Ireland, his ‘loan’ of money to King James earned him an earldom, and his descendants later became – and remain – the rich and powerful Dukes of Devonshire.

The Boyle family’s Lismore Papers, preserved by the Irish government and published, do contain leads to the location of John White’s house. There we see an entry for “Rents in hand 25 March 1632” that lists “Richard Silver for his lands in Kilmore near Tallagh, per Ann xx lb.” Twenty pounds in 1632 was a considerable amount of money. The Kilmore property in question must have been quite large, but if it included the current Kilmore townland, then perhaps not unreasonable. This would suggest that White’s house lay in that property, but that it was quite likely destroyed in 1598.

Additional details, however, proved that the explanation was not quite correct.

The Boyle 1716 rental book lists “Killmore” itself as having a little over 167 acres in arable, and the accompanying map depicts what is essentially the present townland. The Civil Survey of 1654, however, recorded that the Earl of Cork owned “Kilmore having on itt ye towne of Tallogh … in the possession of the several Inhabitants of Tallogh which was a towne formerly incorporated And hath a Mill.” Kilmore then comprised 400 acres, of which 20 was meadow, 300 arable, 60 bog, and 20 rocky. Yet, when Boyle bought Raleigh’s lands, a half century earlier, Tallow was described as “decayed Tallagh.” More to the point, Tallow had been burned during the Desmond uprising of 1568, and may have remained similarly “decayed” until Raleigh acquired it. He may then have chosen dryer land away from the river bank. John White’s detailed 1598 map of one of Raleigh’s estates, that of Mogeely, several miles west of Tallow, depicts Curraglass village with houses of English settlers lining the approach to crossroads. Tallow follows that same pattern. Raleigh’s creation flourished for about a decade until 1598, when the town was put to the torch, its residents having fled to Youghal. As we know now that this literally ‘new’ town was included in Raleigh’s Kilmore lands, John White’s residence was destroyed along with all the other settlers’ homes. Just as the settlers at Curraglass built only English-style timber-framed dwellings, so too would have been the houses of Raleigh’s new town.

It took several years for the English army to suppress the rebellion. Tallow was then rebuilt by Boyle on the same site. But Raleigh’s town was then a thing of the past, as was John White’s house within it.

1. As reported at the 2012 Bill and Ida Friday International Symposium – Roanoke Conundrum Fact and fiction, these theories are cited in Eric Klingelhofer, “Far from the Outer Banks: Recent Research on Ralegh, Lane, Harriot and White,” in lebame houston and Douglas Stover, eds, Deciphering the Roanoke Mystery (Fort Raleigh National Historic Site, 2015), pp. 127-142, and available for study at the on-site Museum Resource Center.
2. https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/22902802.
3. ROAD from DUBLIN to YOUGAL & to CASTLE MARTYR by Tallagh, Publish’d as the Act directs Septr. 24th.1778; map in County Waterford Public Library, Dungarven.
4. https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/22902803.
5. https://www.buildingsofireland.ie/buildings-search/building/22902804.
6. A.B. Grossart, The Lismore Papers, Vol. 5 (Chiswick Press, London, 1886), p. 2.
7. A Book of the survey of Lands on the Southside of the River Bride, by Tobias Bateman, 1717; National Library of Ireland, MSS 6148-9, entry No. 15.
8. Simington, R.C. (ed.), The Civil Survey A.D. 1654-1656 County of Waterford Vol. VI (Stationery Office, Dublin, 1942), p.16.
9. Patrick C. Power, History of Waterford City and County (Mercier Press, Dublin, 1990), p. 62.