Built by the O’Callagans on the site of an earlier castle, this limestone-walled enclosure covers an impressive 1.85 hectares, making it the only complete bawn of a fortified house in County Cork and one of the largest in Ireland. Local records from 1897 describe how the entire six-acre area was once paved over, suggesting this was more than just a simple defensive wall; it was a carefully planned and substantial fortification complex.

The bawn’s trapezoidal layout stretches roughly 180 metres from southwest to northeast and 200 metres from southeast to northwest, with walls reaching heights of up to four metres. Originally, corner towers anchored three points of the enclosure, whilst the fourth ended at a natural cliff face. The southeastern tower, which stood until 1906, housed an unusual feature: a columbarium with 13 tiers of nesting boxes for pigeons, similar to one found at Carriganass Castle in West Cork. These weren’t merely decorative; pigeons provided both a valuable food source and messenger service in the 17th century. The two surviving corner towers, now rubble-filled and standing to one storey, are pierced with gunloops, as are the semi-circular projections that bulge from the middle of the eastern and western walls.

Despite weathering centuries and losing its southeastern tower to stone robbers and a section of eastern wall to a 1997 storm, the bawn remains an extraordinary survival. The fortified house it once protected may draw initial attention, but it’s this vast walled enclosure, with its strategic gunloops, defensive towers, and evidence of daily life in its former pigeon loft, that truly reveals the scale of ambition and resources the O’Callaghans commanded in early modern Cork. Protected under a preservation order since 1934, it stands as a testament to the uncertain times that demanded such formidable defences in 17th-century Ireland.