More pictures of this place

Coole Castle Ferbane Offaly · Photo: . · CC BY-SA 4.0

What is recorded here

Coole Castle is a surviving 16th-century Irish tower house in County Offaly, its four storeys of limestone rubble still standing near the River Brosna. The datestone of 1575 above the second-floor fireplace marks when the building was made or sharply changed, while murder holes, guard rooms and spiral stairs show how much its people trusted walls more than neighbours. Small chambers, narrow toilet passages, fireplaces and later musket loops fill the tower with the ordinary pressure of living under threat. It is not grand in the way storybooks prefer, but it is honest: a family made a sharp box, put doors and flames inside it, and left the box behind.

Coole Castle is recorded as a castle in County Offaly. Its open map record supplies this location and any linked names or public references.

Coole Castle was built in the 17th century by the O'Conor Don family, the hereditary chieftains of the O'Conors of Offaly. It is remembered as a significant historical and architectural site associated with the preservation of Irish heritage and as the location of the Coole Park, a noted example of an 18th-century deer park.