The site known as Coolreagh House represents our best guess at its location, based on records from the early 1900s, though even this should be taken with a grain of salt. According to local historians Risteárd Ua Cróinín and Martin Breen, who documented Clare’s castles and tower houses in an unpublished report, the precise spot where this fortification once commanded the landscape remains frustratingly elusive.

What we do know comes from fragmentary historical records and the diligent work of researchers like Paul Walsh, who compiled information about this mysterious structure. The castle’s story exemplifies a common problem in Irish archaeology; many medieval fortifications have vanished so completely that we’re left chasing shadows through old maps and fading local memories. The early twentieth century seems to be the last time anyone had a reasonable idea of where to look for it, and even then, certainty was already slipping away.

This ghostly castle joins the ranks of Ireland’s lost heritage sites, structures that once played vital roles in local defence and administration but have since been reclaimed by the landscape. Ua Cróinín and Breen’s comprehensive survey of Clare’s fortified buildings, completed as recently as 2014, could only mark its approximate location, a testament to how thoroughly some parts of our built heritage can disappear when stone is repurposed, memory fails, and the written record stays silent.