Blarney Castle

A timber house is thought to have stood here before 1200, replaced by a stone fortification around 1210; that was destroyed in 1446 and rebuilt by Cormac Láidir MacCarthy, Lord of Muscry, who also built Kilcrea and Carrignamuck. The Blarney Stone sits among the castle’s machicolations. Parliamentarian forces under Lord Broghill seized the place in 1646 during the Confederate Wars; it went back to Donough MacCarty at the Restoration, and was confiscated again in the 1690s when the 4th Earl of Clancarty was captured in the Williamite War.