Rathnaguppaun Castle, Rath, Co. Mayo
Standing in the townland of Rath in County Mayo, Rathnaguppaun Castle is a modest but intriguing example of a late medieval tower house.
Rathnaguppaun Castle, Rath, Co. Mayo
Built sometime in the 15th or 16th century, this four-storey structure would have served as both a defensive stronghold and a residence for a local Gaelic or Anglo-Norman family. The castle’s name derives from the Irish ‘Ráth na gCupán’, meaning ‘fort of the cups’, though the exact significance of this curious name has been lost to time.
The tower house follows the typical design of its era, with thick limestone walls, narrow defensive windows on the lower levels, and slightly larger openings higher up where residents would have lived. A spiral staircase in one corner would have connected the floors, whilst the ground level likely housed storage and perhaps livestock during times of trouble. The upper chambers would have contained the main hall and private quarters, complete with a fireplace whose chimney can still be traced in the remaining stonework.
Today, Rathnaguppaun Castle stands as a roofless ruin, its walls weathered but largely intact. The structure offers visitors a tangible connection to the complex social and political landscape of late medieval Ireland, when such tower houses dotted the countryside; symbols of local power and focal points for the communities that surrounded them. Though it lacks the grandeur of larger castles, Rathnaguppaun represents the more common reality of medieval Irish life, where minor nobility and prosperous families built these sturdy towers as statements of their status and practical refuges in uncertain times.