Roughan Castle (Supposed Site of) — Report the wrong picture

What is recorded here

Roughan Castle vanished so completely that modern maps mark its supposed site with a humble cross inside an ancient rath, trusting a 1574 list and local memory more than visible stone. The abandoned farmhouse beside the rath still holds dressed limestone blocks and a flat elliptical arch, perhaps fragments pulled from the lost castle and rebuilt into ordinary domestic life. What disappeared is not even ruin but shape itself: a boundary, a room, a tower line or a whole small world of leverage and residence, erased until only a doorway lintel and a map cross remain to suggest that people once stood there making the place mean something.

This castle is indicated by a cross - the symbol for ‘site of’ - in the NW half of the interior of a rath (CL009-096001-) on the 1897 OS 25-inch plan and 1920 ed. of the OS 6-inch map, and it is labelled ‘Roughan Castle (Supposed Site of)’ on the latter map. A castle is listed in Roughan in 1574 when it was in the ownership of an O’Loughlin (Ua Cróinín and Breen 1997). Westropp (1915, 256) was ‘inclined to accept’ a local account of the rath being the site of the ‘Castle of Roughan’ as ‘there seems to have been one in the townland’. However, there is absolutely no visible trace of it in the rath and most of its interior remains undisturbed. The abandoned 18th/19th-century farmhouse immediately to its E incorporates ‘much cut and dressed limestone blocks’ (Ua Cróinín and Breen 1997). A blocked doorway bears a lintel (Wth 1.08m; H 0.43m; front face H 0.13m; receding face T 0.2m) consisting of a single piece of dressed limestone finished to form a flat elliptical arch (Wth 0.86m) with a chamfered edge (Wth 0.06m). Another stone (Wth 0.47m; H 0.19m) at the base of this doorway is the sillstone (Wth 0.2m) of a single-light chamfered window. These appear to be of late-medieval date and may be associated with the castle. (Ua Cróinín and Breen 1997) See attached document with details from Risteárd Ua Cróinín and Martin Breen, The Castles and Tower-houses of Co. Clare (unpublished report).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. Compiled by: Olive Alcock and Conn Herriott Date of upload: 8 June 2022

This remains an important historical record, but the official description says the monument is no longer visible or has been destroyed. The monument record does not grant public access. Check the route and ask the landowner before entering private land.