Historic Places in County Sligo

Ballinafad Castle stands on a limestone outcrop in County Sligo and is one of the most striking tower houses in the northwest of Ireland. The castle is generally dated to the late sixteenth century and is associated with the O'Rourke family, an important Gaelic dynasty that held considerable authority across this part of Connacht during the late medieval and early modern period. Its position was not accidental. From here the occupants had broad views over the surrounding countryside, allowing the site to function both as a residence and as a watchpoint in a politically unstable time when the expansion of English authority was beginning to press against established Gaelic power structures. Architecturally the building is a classic Irish tower house, rising vertically rather than spreading outward, with thick masonry walls, small openings and an emphasis on defence. Castles of this kind were created to give local lords a defensible residence without the scale or cost of a great enclosure castle or Norman keep. The result was a tall, compact structure designed around security, visibility and controlled access. Ballinafad's surviving shell still conveys that sense of compact power, and even in ruin it gives a strong impression of how fortified domestic life worked in late medieval and early modern Ireland. The castle is also tied to the wider conflict of the Elizabethan wars. In the closing years of the sixteenth century many strongholds in the west and northwest became caught up in struggles between Gaelic Irish lords and expanding English authority, with the Nine Years' War of 1593 to 1603 representing the decisive confrontation. Ballinafad was one of the places drawn into that tension. That historical backdrop gives the ruin more meaning than its walls alone might suggest, because it belonged to a moment when the older local power structures of Connacht were under the most intense pressure they had yet faced. The site has an isolated and atmospheric quality that rewards a visit. The ruin rises directly from the rock and the landscape around it remains open and rural, offering the same kind of unobstructed prospect that made the site valuable in the first place. It is a place where the relationship between building, bedrock and surrounding land explains clearly why it was built exactly here. County Sligo is rich in prehistoric and medieval heritage, and Ballinafad fits naturally into a day that takes in the broader archaeological landscape of the region, including the megalithic monuments of the Carrowmore and Carrowkeel complexes to the south.

Ballymote Castle is situated on the western outskirts of Ballymote village, 15 miles south of Sligo in the north west of Ireland. The castle is a large rectangular enclosure castle which is in a state of partial ruin although well preserved in parts. The symmetrical plan of the keepless castle has three quarter round towers at each corner, a double towered gate entrance in the centre of the north wall; now mostly demolished, two D shaped towers in the curtain walls to the east and west and there are also a few remains of a typical gatehouse. The castle is situated on a small amount of ground but the interior of the castle is 30 meters square. Facilities Access to the castle can only be gained via the car park of St. John of God's Nursing Home. It is believed that Ballymote castle was built in the 1300's by the Red Earl of Ulster, Richard de Burgo and was the last and greatest Norman castle in Connaught to be built. The castle was subject to many battles and takeovers between 1317 and 1584 and left abandoned for much of the time with the two major owners being the O'Connors of Sligo and the MacDonagh clan. Richard Bingham, governor of Connaught, took the castle on behalf of the English in 1584 and remained there for 14 years before it was surrendered once again to the MacDonagh's. Finally the castle was sold by the MacDonagh's to Red Hugh O'Donnell. It was from here that he rode out to the Battle of Kinsale in 1601 leaving the castle to become badly damaged and the O'Donnell clan having to surrender to the English. After this time the castle changed hands on many occasions, mainly between the English; for King James II and local clans. It was the Williamites who dismantled the fortifications and filled in the moat in the late 1690's. The castle is now classed as a National Monument and in the hands of the Office of Public Works who are responsible for its preservation.

Classie Bawn Castle at Mullaghmore in County Sligo is a Victorian turreted castle on a headland above the Atlantic Ocean that is most powerfully associated with Lord Mountbatten, the last Viceroy of India and cousin of Queen Elizabeth II, who was murdered by an IRA bomb placed on his fishing boat in the bay below the castle on 27 August 1979 in one of the most consequential acts of political violence in the history of the Troubles. The castle stands in a position of extraordinary natural beauty above the Mullaghmore headland, its Victorian Gothic outline visible from a wide area of the north Sligo coast. The castle was built in 1856 for Viscount Palmerston, the Prime Minister, in a position of considerable scenic drama above the natural harbour of Mullaghmore. The Mountbatten family purchased it after the Second World War and it became the summer residence where the family spent holidays throughout the following decades, the elderly earl's continued use of this remote Sligo headland after the beginning of the Troubles reflecting a personal attachment to the place that ultimately cost him his life. The village of Mullaghmore below the castle is one of the most attractive on the Sligo coast, its natural harbour providing shelter for a small fishing and pleasure craft fleet and the Mullaghmore Head providing the finest surfing big waves in Ireland, a destination for professional big-wave surfers when the Atlantic swells arrive with sufficient power. The wider Sligo coast and the landscape of W B Yeats, with the great table mountain of Benbulben visible to the east, provides one of the finest scenic settings of any coastal village in Ireland.

Lissadell House is a Greek Revival country house of 1833 on the shores of Sligo Bay in County Sligo, famous as the home of Constance Gore-Booth who became Countess Markiewicz and the first woman elected to the Westminster Parliament in 1918, and her poet sister Eva Gore-Booth. W.B. Yeats was a frequent visitor and immortalised the sisters in verse. The house has been sensitively restored and opened to visitors. The setting on Drumcliff Bay, with Benbulben's dramatic flat-topped profile visible across the water and Yeats's grave at Drumcliff churchyard nearby, places the house within one of the most scenically and literarily significant landscapes in Connacht.

Parkes Castle is a beautifully restored early seventeenth-century plantation castle on the shore of Lough Gill in County Sligo, managed by the Office of Public Works and open to visitors with an interpretive exhibition. Built by Robert Parke on the site of an O'Rourke stronghold, the three-storey tower house and surrounding bawn wall represent one of the best-presented plantation castles in Ireland, restored using traditional materials and techniques. The setting on Lough Gill is exceptional: the lake inspired W.B. Yeats's poem The Lake Isle of Innisfree, with Innisfree island visible from the castle shore. The combination of restored plantation castle, literary associations and the outstanding natural beauty of Lough Gill makes Parkes Castle one of the most rewarding heritage destinations in Connacht.