Qualla: Dunmanway Castle

Dunmanway Castle: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

When the workmen began pulling down Dunmanway Castle in the early 1800s, they broke through into something they had not expected: a subterranean chamber beneath the foundations, full of rubble and earth, that turned out to be the castle's granary. From this underground store, the chronicler Bennett recorded, the medieval Geraldines and their successors the McCarthys had once drawn supplies for their kern - the lightly-armed Gaelic foot soldiers - and their gallowglass mercenaries, who had repeatedly struck terror into rival chieftains and waged the hopeless campaign of trying to push the English settlers back out of West Cork. By the time the granary was opened, the Geraldines and the McCarthys were long gone, the castle was being demolished to build something else, and Dunmanway itself was a quiet market town in a Protestant-owned countryside. The fort of the gables had become its own grave goods.

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Dunmanway Castle: Catherine's Castle

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The Annals of the Four Masters record that the tower house called Dun-na-m-beann was built by Catherine Fitzgerald - the daughter of Thomas FitzGerald, 7th Earl of Desmond, and the wife of Finghin MacCarthy Reagh. 'It was by her,' the annals say, 'that Beann-dubh and Dun-na-m-bea...

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Dunmanway Castle: Fort of the Yellow Women

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

What the name actually means has never been entirely settled. The Irish-language scholar John O'Donovan argued that Dun-na-mbeann simply described the structure - 'the fort of the gables or pinnacles' - referring to the tower's distinctive roof line. Another reading translated th...

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Dunmanway Castle: Pardons, Forfeitures, Sales

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

In 1584 the clan chieftain Tadhg-an-Fhorsa was granted a pardon by Queen Elizabeth - recorded with antique formality as 'Teig M'Dermod M'Cormoek M'Cartie, alias Teighe O'Norso, of Downeboy [Dunmanway], gent' - for his role in the Desmond Rebellions, the long Munster uprising that...

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Dunmanway Castle: What Remains

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Nothing of Dunmanway Castle stands above ground today. The site is on the north bank of the Sally River - a small tributary that runs through the town of Dunmanway - and the National Monuments Service classifies it as the location of an Anglo-Norman masonry castle, even though it...

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