Qualla: Macroom Castle

Macroom Castle: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown photographer, Public domain. Walk into the town square at Macroom and you will see a gatehouse that does not lead to a castle. Two round turrets flank an arched passage. A guard chamber sits above the gate, fronted with slate cut to look like dressed stone. Two cannons stand on stone pedestals before the entrance. This is what Robert Hedges Eyre had built before 1824, a medieval-romantic theatrical folly meant to dress up the marketplace. Walk through it and you find nothing on the other side but a school, a row of houses, and somewhere downhill a ruin near the bridge over the River Sullane. The actual castle stood here for at least six hundred years. It was burned at least five times. The last fire was in 1922.

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Image: Unknown photographer | Public domain

Macroom Castle: O'Flynns and MacCarthys

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit ME, CC BY-SA 3.0. The first castle on this rock probably dates to the time of King John, the late 12th century. The old Irish name, Caislean Ui Fhloinn, points to the O'Flynns, who held much of this part of Muskerry before the MacCarthys arrived. In 1353 Muskerry, with Macroom inside it, was given...

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Image: ME | CC BY-SA 3.0

Macroom Castle: The Bishop and the Tree

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Jo Turner, CC BY-SA 2.0. The most haunting episode at Macroom Castle came in 1650, during the Cromwellian conquest. Bishop Boetius MacEgan, Bishop of Ross, assembled a Confederate army at the castle to resist Lord Broghill's Cromwellian troops. When Broghill approached, the castle garrison set fire to th...

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Image: Jo Turner | CC BY-SA 2.0

Macroom Castle: The Penn Connection

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit DeFacto, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1656, during the Commonwealth, the confiscated castle was given to Admiral William Penn, a senior Royal Navy officer who had served Cromwell. He moved into Macroom Castle that year. His son, also William Penn, was twelve years old. The younger William Penn would later convert ...

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Image: DeFacto | CC BY-SA 4.0

Macroom Castle: Forfeited, Auctioned, Owned

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Rauenstein, Public domain. During the Williamite war, the fourth Earl of Clancarty turned Jacobite. On 11 September 1689 he used Macroom Castle as a prison for Protestants who had been evicted from Cork. The castle changed hands twice more in the war before Major Percy Kirke finally relieved it for William...

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Image: Rauenstein | Public domain

Macroom Castle: The Last Fire

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Richard Fensome, CC BY-SA 2.0. During the Irish War of Independence, British Auxiliaries used Macroom Castle as their base in the area. It became one of the targets of the IRA campaign and was associated, by proximity and command structure, with the Kilmichael Ambush. During the Irish Civil War, anti-treaty fo...

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Image: Richard Fensome | CC BY-SA 2.0