Site of Pallis Castle, Pallis, Co. Kerry
On a small rise north of Pallis Farm, overlooking the valley of the Laune River in County Kerry, lies what remains of Pallis Castle.
Site of Pallis Castle, Pallis, Co. Kerry
Today, visitors won’t find the rectangular structure that once stood here, roughly 30 metres east to west and 15 metres north to south, as marked on the 1846 Ordnance Survey map. Instead, the site now consists of a square enclosure measuring about 40 by 38 metres, defined by substantial earthen and stone banks that rise nearly four metres high on the exterior. The interior slopes gently eastward and presents an irregular, undulating landscape dotted with mounds of earth and stone that follow no discernible pattern, whilst mature trees and scrub vegetation have taken hold throughout the cattle-poached ground.
The castle’s demise came well before modern times. In 1841, surveyors documented the ruins of what appeared to be a tower house, with walls nearly two metres thick constructed from brown stone, lime and sand mortar, featuring distinctive chamfered limestone quoins. By then, however, much of the structure had already been dismantled; a road jobber had removed materials in 1837 to repair the nearby highway, and locals report that stones from the castle were repurposed to build Pallis Farm to the southeast, as well as Beaufort Bridge and Beaufort House to the south.
This vanished fortress once served as a residence of MacCarthy More, one of the prominent Gaelic lordships of medieval Munster. Though the physical structure has largely disappeared, redistributed across the surrounding landscape in walls, bridges and buildings, the earthworks that remain still mark where this stronghold once commanded views across the Laune River valley, a testament to the strategic importance of this modest rise in the Kerry countryside.