Carrigafoyle Castle

Carrigafoyle Castle is a late 15^th century tower-house built on Carrig Island, a small rocky outcrop at the mouth of the Shannon Estuary, just a short distance from Ballylongford, Co. Kerry. The place name, Carrigafoyle, comes from the Irish “Carrig an Phoill” meaning the rock of the hole. Carrigafoyle Castle was probably built in the 1490s by Connor Liath O’Connor. The site was referred to in English as “The Guardian of the Shannon” because of its strategic location controlling the shipping lanes to and from Limerick City. At high tide a moat surrounded the castle, and a small dock was built beside the fortress to allow boats to sail and moor beside it.

The tower-house is a five storeyed building just over 24m in height with a winding staircase of 104 steps leading to the top. During the Second Desmond Rebellion of 1579 -1583 the castle was garrisoned by fifty Irish rebels and sixteen of their Spanish allies under the command of a Captain Julian. At Easter 1580 the castle was attacked by an English army under the command of Sir William Pelham the Lord Justice of Ireland. Tradition recounts the siege as seeing one of the first uses of artillery in Kerry. On the first day of the attack Pelham ordered troops to cross to the sea-wall, where they were pinned down by gunfire and had boulders thrown at them from the battlements. The fighting was reported to be so fierce that the rocky outcrop around the castle “became slippery with blood”. On the second day of the siege more English reinforcements arrived and the castle’s western wall collapsed under repeated cannon fire. Many of the castle’s defenders were killed, crushed by the falling masonry, and the survivors were put to death when the English stormed the castle.

The strategic significance of Carrigafoyle Castle is shown by the swiftness with which other rebel fortresses were abandoned once news of the destruction had spread, with Askeaton Castle and Desmond Castle Newcastle West abandoned shortly afterwards to adopt a guerrilla warfare strategy for the next three years until the rebellion ended when the Earl of Desmond was killed at Glenageenty in the Slieve Mish mountains near Tralee.

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This national monument is protected in accordance with the National Monuments Acts 1930 to 2014