Castle, Ballynaraw South, Co. Sligo
In the marshy rushes along the southeast bank of the Bunnanaddan river stand the weathered remains of what locals once called Cáislean Bhun na Neadáin.
Castle, Ballynaraw South, Co. Sligo
The fragmentary ruins of this rectangular castle structure, measuring roughly 11 metres by 6 metres internally, occupy the centre of a slightly raised, D-shaped platform that remains noticeably drier than the boggy terrain surrounding it. The surviving masonry walls, which reach heights of up to 3.3 metres at the north, west and south corners, show the characteristic battered profile typical of medieval defensive architecture, whilst a gap on the northeast side likely marks where the original doorway once stood.
The castle’s defensive features extend beyond its thick walls, which measure nearly 2 metres in width. Archaeological evidence reveals at least two fosses, or defensive ditches, that once protected the stronghold; one curves around the southern edge of the raised platform, whilst a second, wider fosse lies further out to the east-southeast, some 13 metres from the platform’s edge. The interior of the castle now sits about a metre above the surrounding ground level, likely due to centuries of accumulated fallen masonry filling the space within.
Local tradition attributes the castle’s construction to the MacDonaghs, a prominent Gaelic family in medieval Sligo, and the site was formally recorded in the Ordnance Survey of 1836. Today, field boundaries abut the raised area to the northeast and east, whilst a silted tailrace from a 19th-century corn mill traces the northern edge of the platform, adding layers of later industrial history to this ancient defensive site. Despite its ruined state, the castle remains an evocative reminder of the region’s turbulent medieval past, when such fortified structures dotted the Irish landscape.