The MacCarthys of Muskerry were one of medieval Ireland's great dynasties. They had lost large areas of mid-Cork to the Anglo-Norman de Cogans during the 13th century, and the 15th century was their long campaign to take it back. Carrigaphooca was a piece of that campaign. Some sources credit Dermot Mor MacCarthy of Drishane with the construction, working in roughly the same years his brother Cormac Laidir was rebuilding Blarney Castle thirty miles east. The tower is simple sandstone and limestone, rectangular, five floors, no fireplace. The Heritage Unit of Cork County Council put it plainly: the building was constructed more with protection in mind than comfort. The stairwell is fifty-four steps, the lower flight straight, the upper four floors spiralling. The ground floor windows are small and deeply recessed, the walls extraordinarily thick. The tower sat directly on the route between Macroom and Kerry. It was attacked often.

In 1601, an army of Irish lords gathered around Kinsale to support a Spanish landing meant to break English power in Ireland. The battle ended in disaster for the Irish side. Among those who had backed the wrong horse was Cormac Teige McCarthy, the Lord of Blarney. With English forces hunting collaborators, he climbed the rock at Carrigaphooca and locked himself inside the tower. He stayed there until he wrote Elizabeth I a personal letter of apology and received her forgiveness. The image is striking: a Gaelic lord, defeated, hiding five storeys above the Sullane, composing in his cramped quarters a letter to a queen he had just tried to overthrow, sending it overland to London, and waiting for word that he could come down again.

A year later, the tower changed sides. Donal Cam O'Sullivan Beare, leader of one of the last Irish forces still resisting the English in the south, attacked Carrigaphooca with another member of the extended McCarthy family. The siege was protracted. The attackers eventually broke through the outer wall and set fire to the timber door at the north face entrance. The defenders inside surrendered. They were allowed to walk away. That single act of mercy is one of the few documented in this corner of the Nine Years War; most sieges of the period ended in slaughter. O'Sullivan Beare did not have time to enjoy his victory. Within months he would lead the famous winter retreat to the north, a thousand of his people walking through hostile country, of whom only thirty-five would arrive.

The outer defensive walls fell into ruin centuries ago, leaving no traceable remains. Two corner bartizans, projecting stone boxes that allowed defenders to shoot down at attackers, still cling to opposite wall tops. The top floor may once have had a fireplace and proper living quarters; the windows on its north and south walls are larger than any below, opening views toward the Killarney Paps and Mullaghanish to the north. Since the tower fell empty, the narrow windows have become entrances. Crows fly in, carrying twigs, building unauthorised nests in the upper storeys. Layers of woven sticks now line ledges that once held archers. The Office of Public Works restored the site in the 1970s, adding a flight of steps over the rock base and a narrow stepped turret to reach the roof walk. The turret was gated shut in the mid-1980s for safety. The crows have a better view than any visitor.

Carrigaphooca sits at the intersection of two older landscapes. Two fields east, the Carrigaphooca Stone Circle, a Neolithic ring of standing stones, marks ceremonies that ended four thousand years before the tower was built. To the west, a single tall standing stone called a gallan rises alone from a field. The MacCarthys built their fortress in the middle of somebody else's sacred site, and the local Irish name for the surrounding townland is Lissacresig, which in English means Fairyland. The puca of the rock is older than the castle, older than the saints, older than the wars between MacCarthy and McCarthy. The tower is closed to the public now, on private land, owned by the state but maintained at a distance. You can see it from the road. The puca is presumed still in residence.