What is recorded here

Lissylisheen Castle stood as a tower house and bawn in County Clare from at least 1574 until the late seventeenth century. The O’Loughlin clan owned it before the O’Davorens lived there, but human ambition and clan rivalry filled those rooms before stone and time erased them. Now a grass-covered rubble mound marks the site, preserving only the ghost of walls that once defined local power.

At the E edge of a shelf on a gently undulating karst plateau, in rough pasture, within a large multiperiod field system (CL009-001001-). Depicted on the 1842 ed. of the OS 6-inch map as a small circular area (diam. c. 15m) defined by a broken line and labelled ‘Site of Lissylisheen Castle’. On the 1897 OS 25-inch plan it is shown as a roughly triangular hachured mound. Listed as ‘Tower house and Bawn’ in the RMP (1996). In 1574 it was the property of the O’Loughlin clan but by 1585 the O’Davorens were living there; it appears to have been occupied until the end of the seventeenth century (Ua Cróinín and Breen 1996, 10-11). It was in a ruined state when Westropp (1899, 369) recorded it. The tower house is located in the SE corner of the bawn (CL009-001037-). It is almost entirely collapsed and is defined by a grass-covered mound of rubble (19m NW–SE; 16m NE–SW; av. H 2.5–3.6m; max. H 5m on W side). Intact sections of walling at the NW corner (W wall L 3.8m; N wall L 5.9m) appear to be inner walls that supported a vault. 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attached document with details from Risteárd Ua Cróinín and Martin Breen, The Castles and Tower-houses of Co. Clare (unpublished report).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: Conn Herriott and Olive Alcock Date of upload: 12 October 2021

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