What is recorded here

Carrickanass Castle stood on the north bank of the Carn River in County Mayo, where the Burke family built a thirty-foot square tower and strong bawn wall. It disappeared before the mid-19th century, leaving no visible remains at ground level. The lost castle may have watched the river, guarded a crossing, or simply given a local family a place to stand above the water.

Situated at the base of a SSW-facing hillside, on the N bank of the Carn River. The ‘castle and bawn [MA014-057001-] of Carricknassy’ are listed in the 17th-century Stafford Inquisition of County Mayo (O’Sullivan 1958). The castle was extant in the late 18th- and early 19th-century when McParlan (1802, 133) described it as ‘square of thirty feet [c. 9m], about forty-five feet [c. 14m], high surrounded by a strong bawn nine feet [2.75m] high, built by Burke family’. By the mid-19th-century, however, it had been demolished: in 1838 O’Donovan found only a wall, which he interpreted as a remnant of the bawn wall (O'Flanagan 1927, Vol. 1, 272 (141-2), and the location is marked on the 1838 OS 6-inch map as 'Site of Carrickanass Castle'. No remains now visible at ground level. Compiled by: Jane O'Shaughnessy Date of upload: 4 February 2015

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