Qualla: Carrickkildavnet Castle

Carrickkildavnet Castle: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Aubrey Dale, CC BY-SA 2.0. It stands four storeys high on a low promontory at the south end of Achill Island, looking out across the narrow water of Achill Sound toward the Corraun Peninsula. Carrickkildavnet was built around 1429 by the O'Malley clan - the O Maille, Kings of Umaill - to control one of the most strategic stretches of water on the entire west coast of Ireland. Whoever held this tower controlled the only sheltered passage connecting Clew Bay to the south and Blacksod Bay to the north. A hundred years later, the tower passed into the hands of the most famous member the O'Malley clan ever produced: Grainne Ni Mhaille, born around 1530, known in English as Grace O'Malley, and on her own coast as Granuaile, the pirate queen.

Read more: Carrickkildavnet Castle on Qualla

Image: Aubrey Dale | CC BY-SA 2.0

Carrickkildavnet Castle: The Strategic Chokepoint

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Searle, CC BY-SA 2.0. Look at Achill Sound on a map and the reason for a tower at this exact spot becomes immediately obvious. The sound is a narrow channel running north-south between Achill Island and the Corraun Peninsula. A vessel coming up from Clew Bay and heading for the open Atlantic by the no...

Read more: Carrickkildavnet Castle on Qualla

Image: Mike Searle | CC BY-SA 2.0

Carrickkildavnet Castle: Granuaile's Tower

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit MRW, CC BY-SA 3.0. Grace O'Malley inherited the O'Malley maritime tradition and made it formidable. Her fleet ranged the entire west coast of Ireland; she negotiated with Queen Elizabeth I in London in 1593 in a meeting that became one of the iconic stories of sixteenth-century Anglo-Irish encounte...

Read more: Carrickkildavnet Castle on Qualla

Image: MRW | CC BY-SA 3.0

Carrickkildavnet Castle: The Building Itself

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jamip29, CC BY-SA 4.0. Carrickkildavnet is a classic Irish tower house, four storeys built compactly for defence. The first floor is vaulted in stone, and the only access to the upper levels is through a single hole in one corner of that vault - a defensive feature that forced any attacker to come up o...

Read more: Carrickkildavnet Castle on Qualla

Image: Jamip29 | CC BY-SA 4.0

Carrickkildavnet Castle: What the Tower Watches Now

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit John Lucas, CC BY-SA 2.0. From the top of Carrickkildavnet today, on a clear day, you can see the Corraun Peninsula rising across the sound, the Michael Davitt Bridge linking Achill to the mainland a few miles north, and the white shape of the Achill Island Lifeboat Station boathouse less than a hundred m...

Read more: Carrickkildavnet Castle on Qualla

Image: John Lucas | CC BY-SA 2.0