Qualla: McDermott's Castle

McDermott's Castle: Introduction

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit colmmc, CC BY-SA 3.0. There is an island in Lough Key, in the north of County Roscommon, that looks from the shore like something out of a children's story-book - a low green dome of trees ringed with old grey stone, a roofless tower house standing in the middle, no obvious way across the water. It is called Castle Island, and the castle on it is McDermott's. For eight hundred years it was the seat of the Mac Diarmada, the ruling dynasty of Magh Luirg, kings of a small Gaelic territory in northeast Connacht. They lost it in 1586. It has burnt at least twice in its history - once by lightning in 1184 and once again in the mid-twentieth century. And in between, in the 1820s, the great Regency architect John Nash - the man who designed Buckingham Palace's facade and laid out Regent Street in London - was commissioned to convert the ruin into a summer house.

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Image: colmmc | CC BY-SA 3.0

McDermott's Castle: The Annals of Loch Ce

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Suse, CC BY-SA 2.0. The first written record of a castle on this island appears in the Annals of Loch Ce, which note that in 1184 a lightning bolt set the building on fire - one of the earliest dated lightning-strikes recorded in Irish history. Whatever was there was rebuilt. In 1235, during the fin...

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Image: Suse | CC BY-SA 2.0

McDermott's Castle: The Lament

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Alan Murray-Rust, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Mac Diarmada finally lost the island in 1586 under the pressure of the Elizabethan reconquest. The bardic poet Eochaidh O hEoghusa, who died in 1617, wrote a poem lamenting the castle's emptiness - the kind of formal Gaelic elegy in which the bard mourns not just a man or a b...

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Image: Alan Murray-Rust | CC BY-SA 2.0

McDermott's Castle: Silver Pins and Butchered Cattle

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sean an Scuab 13:10, 26 October 2007 (UTC), CC BY-SA 4.0. The Nash summer house burnt in the mid-twentieth century, leaving the island again roofless. In 2014 the castle had its strangest moment of fame when it appeared in an episode of Chris O'Dowd's comedy Moone Boy as the residence of the mysterious 'Island Joe.' In 2018 it was put u...

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Image: Sean an Scuab 13:10, 26 October 2007 (UTC) | CC BY-SA 4.0

McDermott's Castle: What the Lake Holds

Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit SE Keenan, CC BY-SA 4.0. Today Lough Key Forest Park, the eight hundred acres of woodland and water that used to be the Rockingham estate, is the gateway from which most visitors first see Castle Island. A small ferry runs in summer. From the shore, in the right light, the place looks exactly the way a c...

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Image: SE Keenan | CC BY-SA 4.0