County: Cork Site name: CARRIGANASS CASTLE, Carriganass
Sites and Monuments Record No.: N/A Licence number: 02E0834
Author: Colin Breen, Centre for Maritime Archaeology, University of Ulster
Site type: Castle - tower house and Bawn
Period/Dating: Late Medieval (AD 1100-AD 1599)
ITM: E 505228m, N 557021m
Latitude, Longitude (decimal degrees): 51.757491, -9.372815
Carriganass Castle is a late 15th-/early 16th-century tower-house directly north of the small village of Kealkill, 10km north-east of Bantry. The tower-house was one of a number in the Beara region associated with the O’Sullivan Beare later medieval Gaelic lordship. A substantial bawn was built around the tower at the end of the 16th century during an internal family feud in the lordship.
Excavation of a trench measuring 6m by 3m took place at the site in June 2002 as part of a long-term research programme in Bantry Bay to examine the later historical landscape of the area. The trench was positioned to run from the northern wall of the tower-house to the inner face of the northern section of the bawn wall. The ground directly adjacent to the tower was very disturbed, but a foundation plinth was uncovered. The excavations revealed that the bawn was built directly on top of sloping bedrock and was partially destroyed soon after construction, probably as a result of a siege of the site in 1602. Little activity then took place at the site until it was levelled and cobbled as part of a farmyard development in the later part of the 18th century.
The site is currently subject to conservation and interpretative works as part of a community project.
Coleraine BT52 1SA
