Qualla: Ballyheigue Castle

Ballyheigue Castle: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rauenstein, CC BY-SA 3.0. On the night of 27 May 1921, a draper's assistant named Thomas Clifford walked into Ballyheigue Castle with a can of petrol. He poured it across floorboards in rooms where, three weeks earlier, hundreds of north Kerry men had been imprisoned by the Royal Irish Constabulary. He had been ordered to destroy the castle. He lit it and walked out. The Tudor-gothic mansion of the Crosbie family - High Sheriffs of Kerry, MPs at Westminster, the family that had held this stretch of coast since the bishop of Ardfert was named John Crosbie a few centuries earlier - burned. The walls survived. Almost everything else didn't. Today the ruin is a clubhouse for a golf course.

Read more: Ballyheigue Castle on Qualla

Image: Rauenstein | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ballyheigue Castle: The Crosbie Story

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ingo Mehling, CC BY-SA 3.0. The Crosbies were once the Mac an Chrosáin, a bardic family of Leinster - poets, in other words, attached to a Gaelic lord's household. At some point in the late 16th or early 17th century, the family converted to Protestantism, anglicised their name, and started moving up the co...

Read more: Ballyheigue Castle on Qualla

Image: Ingo Mehling | CC BY-SA 3.0

Ballyheigue Castle: The First Burning

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Park, CC BY-SA 2.0. Trouble started early. On 1 December 1912, a hay shed at the castle was set on fire. The next day, two more hay sheds went up, destroying 200 tons of hay. James Crosbie claimed £1,000 in damages. The fires came in a context of escalating tension over land and politics across rura...

Read more: Ballyheigue Castle on Qualla

Image: Colin Park | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ballyheigue Castle: The Internment Camp

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Warren.buckley at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5. In early 1921, the building stood vacant. A Mr. Palmer and Mrs. Erskine moved in for a few weeks - Palmer ran local creameries, and Erskine was in the process of negotiating some kind of transaction with him. Erskine then informed Michael Pierce, the captain of the local Irish Vo...

Read more: Ballyheigue Castle on Qualla

Image: Warren.buckley at English Wikipedia | CC BY 2.5

Ballyheigue Castle: Petrol on Floorboards

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Cargoking, CC BY 3.0. On 25 May 1921, an auction was held at the castle to sell off the building's contents - furniture, drapes, fixtures. Two days later, on 27 May, local Irish Volunteers came at night with cans of petrol. Thomas Clifford - the draper's assistant - was the man who did the lighting. H...

Read more: Ballyheigue Castle on Qualla

Image: Cargoking | CC BY 3.0

Ballyheigue Castle: Apartments and Greens

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Colin Park, CC BY-SA 2.0. For most of the 20th century, the burned-out shell of Ballyheigue Castle stood as a ruin on a piece of coast spectacular enough to make ruin photogenic. In 1975, a low section of the building to the left of the main front elevation was reconstructed and converted into apartments....

Read more: Ballyheigue Castle on Qualla

Image: Colin Park | CC BY-SA 2.0

Ballyheigue Castle: Bardic to Brigadier

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit CC BY-SA 2.0. The arc of Ballyheigue Castle traces something larger about Ireland. The Mac an Chrosáin family produced poets for Leinster lords in the 16th century. Four hundred years later, their descendants were producing British army officers and high sheriffs, lived in Tudor-gothic mansion...

Read more: Ballyheigue Castle on Qualla

Image: CC BY-SA 2.0