Qualla: Castle Salem, Cork

Castle Salem, Cork: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JohnArmagh, Public domain. In the early spring of 1670, the young Quaker William Penn rode out from Cork into the West Cork hills and stayed for weeks at a tower house tucked into a wooded valley near Rosscarbery. He came again in late March, and again in April. His Irish Journal records the visits with characteristic precision: 21 February, 23 February, 24 February, 25 February, 26 March, 29 March through 3 April, 6 April, 16 April. The Castle was called Castlesalem then - a fortified Norman tower, two centuries old already, sheltered in a small valley 'surrounded by steep and lofty hills.' Penn was twenty-five. Twelve years later, he would found Pennsylvania. The path that led him there ran in part through this Irish farmhouse.

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Image: JohnArmagh | Public domain

Castle Salem, Cork: The Black Peak

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ingo Mehling, CC BY-SA 3.0. The castle was originally called Benduff - in Irish, 'the black peak.' It was built around 1470, most likely by Catherine Fitzgerald, daughter of Thomas, 7th Earl of Desmond, who married Finghin MacCarthy Reagh, head of the MacCarthy Reagh dynasty of Carbery. Catherine's father h...

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Image: Ingo Mehling | CC BY-SA 3.0

Castle Salem, Cork: Cromwell's Confiscations

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Searle, CC BY-SA 2.0. The lands of Knocknamadogue, on which Benduff stood, had belonged to Florence McCarthy, a Catholic rebel whose estates were forfeited to Oliver Cromwell's forces during the Cromwellian conquest of Ireland in the 1650s. The surrounding lands had belonged to the O'Donovans. The Eng...

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Image: Mike Searle | CC BY-SA 2.0

Castle Salem, Cork: The Cromwellian Who Became a Quaker

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chmee2, CC BY-SA 3.0. Then, in 1656, William Morris became a Quaker. The conversion of a Cromwellian soldier to the Religious Society of Friends - pacifist, anti-clerical, opposed to tithes and oaths - was remarkable. He became an active member of the emerging Friends community in Ireland, hosting mee...

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Image: Chmee2 | CC BY-SA 3.0

Castle Salem, Cork: Penn at the Castle

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit N Chadwick, CC BY-SA 2.0. William Penn first met William Morris through Quaker circles. By early 1670, when Penn was twenty-five and travelling in Ireland on legal business for his father, the friendship had become close enough that Penn stayed repeatedly at Castlesalem. He described the place in his Iris...

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Image: N Chadwick | CC BY-SA 2.0

Castle Salem, Cork: Still a Working Farm

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Mike Searle, CC BY-SA 2.0. The castle was sold in 1853 at the encumbered estates court - a forum for the forced sale of bankrupt Irish estates after the Famine - for £1,350, bought by a Dr. Fitzgibbon. By 1870 it was in the hands of Mrs Eliza Fitzgibbon. In 1895, Patrick Daly bought the castle and the land...

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Image: Mike Searle | CC BY-SA 2.0