Macroom Castle, Macroom, Co Cork –ruin
Bence-Jones, Mark. A Guide to Irish Country Houses (originally published as Burke’s Guide to Country Houses volume 1 Ireland by Burke’s Peerage Ltd. 1978); Revised edition 1988 Constable and Company Ltd, London.
p. 198. “(MacCarthy, Clancarty, E/DEP; Shelswell-White/IFR) A C15 castle of the MacCarthys of Muskerry on the bank of the River Sullane; partly destroyed by fire in the Civil War, after which it was confiscated and granted to the Parliamentary Admiral Sir William Penn, father of William Penn of Pennsylvania; recovered after the Restoration by the MacCarthys, Earls of Clancarty, who restored and modernized it. Having been confiscated again, along with other Clancarty estates, after the Williamite War, it passed to the Hedges Eyres. It was much admired by Dean Swift, in his progress through the country…The castle was burnt ca 1920 and has since been a ruin, part of which collapsed a few years ago.”
1st Earl of Clancarty; 2nd Viscount Muskerry
Listed in Vanishing Country Houses of Ireland by The Knight of Glin, David J. Griffin and Nicholas K. Robinson, published by The Irish Architectural Archive and The Irish Georgian Society, 1988.
“A fifteenth century castle reconstructed in the early 19C for Robert Hedges Eyre. Burnt in 1920. Now a ruin.”
https://theirishaesthete.com/2024/08/23/a-missed-opportunity/
A Missed Opportunity
In her marvellous memoir Bricks and Flower, Katherine Everett described how, in August 1922 and at the age of 50, she had cycled from Limerick to Macroom, County Cork at the request of her distant cousin and godmother Olive, Lady Ardilaun to see what remained of the latter’s property, a castle in the centre of the town which had just been burned by anti-Treaty forces. Located above the river Sullane, the castle dates back to the 12th century and for several hundred years was occupied by the McCarthys before eventually passing into the ownership of the Hedges Eyre family before eventually being inherited by Lady Ardilaun. Two years after the fire, she sold the castle to a group of local businessmen; the main part of the building was demolished in the 1960s, with just the outer walls remaining, a series of mediocre school buildings erected within them. What survives suffers badly from neglect (as indeed does the river and the nine-arch bridge crossing which dates from c.1800) with the local county council failing to make the most of what has potential to be a popular visitor attraction. Instead, Macroom’s most significant piece of architectural heritage as been left to moulder: a missed opportunity.
Irish Historic Houses 