Brackloon Castle — Cloonkea

In level grassland overlooking bogland to the E and surrounded by a stream from W through S to E. In existence in 1557 when it was captured by the Lord Chief Justice (O’Flanagan 1927, Vol. 2, 109-10), the castle was owned by 'Owen Omadyn' in 1574 (Nolan 1901 6, 110). On inspection in the early 1990s, this rectangular four-storey high tower house (8.4m N-E-SW; 6.7m), with a gentle base-batter, was fairly well preserved and had been partially restored. It was constructed of roughly coursed undressed limestone. In places the masonry had been repointed with cement and all the walls were rendered. The NW wall was built on a low plinth and a hairline crack was visible running down the centre of this wall. A modified pointed doorway in the SW wall, with a concrete lintel, accessed a lobby with an overhead murder-hole. Further doorways off the lobby accessed a vaulted guardroom to the W, the spiral staircase in the S corner and the main ground-floor room to the NE. None of the floors survived but corbels marked their location and indicated that they were wooden. The upper floors appear to have consisted of a main room with subsidiary chambers above the doorway. At 2nd-floor level several steps of the spiral stairs were robbed out making it inaccessible beyond that point. Fireplaces were visible in the NE wall on the 1st and 3rd floors and in the SW wall on the 2nd floor. Diagonal chimney stacks rose from the SW wall and inside the NE wall. Bartizans survived on the E and W corners and there was another one over the doorway at 3rd-floor level. All the windows were plain and rectangular, many set in wide embrasures. The tower house, which is private ownership, has since been fully restored and is now occupied. (Madden 1902, 23) Compiled by: Olive Alcock Date of upload: 27 September 2021