What is recorded here

Dough Castle rises as a broken six-storey tower on the northern edge of Liscannor Bay, watching the Inagh River and open sea through gaps where walls once closed the horizon. Rory O’Conor lost his life there in 1422, and later O’Brien hands argued, prayed, petitioned and lived beside that same strand. Now only the north-west wall stands nearly twenty metres high, its windows empty and its floors gone, while golf balls arc past the scarps where a bawn may have stretched. The castle does not explain itself; it waits for someone young enough to imagine the rooms, the fears and the music that filled them before the stones began falling.

In a golf links on the N tip of a bank of sand dunes flanking Liscannor Bay, with the bay to the W, and the Inagh River to the N and E. The castle is situated on a slight rise and the ground falls away sharply to the N and E. There are clear views in all directions. Indicated and named ‘Dough Castle (in ruins) on the 1840 and 1916 OS 6-inch maps. The former map shows the outline of a large rectangular building to the N of the castle, and two smaller buildings immediately W of it. These are not shown on the later map. The castle was built by the O’Conors of Corcomroe by at least the 1420s. In 1422, Rory, son of Conor O’Conor, Lord of Corcomroe, was slain by a relative ‘in his own town of Caislean Dumhcha’. By the mid-16th century, it was held by the O’Briens. In 1582, the O’Conors formally handed Dough and other castles to the O’Briens, and in 1583 Turlough O’Brien entered into surrender and regrant with the crown for these and other lands. The O’Briens of Dough converted to Protestantism and during the ‘1641 Rebellion’, Sir Daniel O’Brien of Dough came to the aid of English settlers. In 1642 he was noted as holding the 'strand hasse’ of Dough, and he petitioned in 1652 that it might not be demolished. Dough was spared by the Cromwellians and he recovered his lands after the Restoration, continuing to reside at Dough. The Down Survey barony map of Corcomroe (1656-8) depicts the building as a stylised tower with a gabled house appended to one side. The family moved from Dough to Ennistymon at the end of the 17th or early-18th century. The E wall of the castle fell before 1839, and further portions, including a chimney, fell c. 1878 (Westropp 1908, 202). A six-storey tower house (13.5m NW-SE; 9.8m NE-SW), only the NW wall of which survives to full height (H c. 20m), built of roughly coursed limestone flags bound with lime mortar. It features cut and dressed quoins, robbed out to first-floor level. The ground-floor doorway does not survive. The NW wall has five large late-17th or 18th-century window opes set into splayed embrasures originally supported by wooden lintels, with a loop at ground-floor level. Similarly, the SW wall has three surviving large windows of the same style, with a loop at ground-floor level. The two ground floor loops are set within squared and splayed embrasures and there is an aumbry in the W corner of the ground-floor chamber. There is no evidence for an internal vault and the floors were supported on timber joists, with joist-holes visible at each level. A short section of wall facing (L c. 3.5m) on the steep scarp immediately SE of the castle may be traces of a bawn. References: Westropp, T.J. 1908 Ancient remains near Lehinch, Co. Clare. Limerick Fieldclub Journal 3(12), 193-212. Breen, M. and Ua Cróinín, R. 1997 Some north-west Clare towerhouses. The Other Clare 21, 5-14. The following items have been uploaded: CL015-089002-_01.pdf Details from Risteárd Ua Cróinín and Martin Breen, The Castles and Tower-houses of Co. Clare (unpublished report). Uploaded courtesy of R. Ua Cróinín and M. Breen. CL015-089002-_01.jpg View of castle from NW CL015-089002-_02.jpg View of castle from W CL015-089002-_03.jpg View from NE CL015-089002-_04.jpg SW ground floor internal wall CL015-089002-_05.jpg NW ground floor internal wall CL015-089002-_06.jpg Fallen masonry to SE of castle Compiled by: Mary Tunney and Eve Campbell Date of upload: 15 August 2023

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