Ballymarkahan Castle

Ballymarkahan Castle is the ruin of a medieval tower house in the parish of Quin, County Clare, Ireland. Tower houses of this type were built by local Gaelic clans during the 15th and 16th centuries as fortified residences, and hundreds survive across Clare alone. By 1839, antiquarians John O'Donovan and Eugene O'Curry already recorded it as a ruin in the Ordnance Survey letters, meaning it had been abandoned well before the 19th century. Scholar Thomas Johnson Westropp catalogued it in 1899 among 195 minor castles and peel towers in the county. Today little remains beyond scattered stonework, sitting quietly in the green pastoral landscape of rural Clare, well off the main tourist trail.