The site, located on the south side of a stream, was recorded on the 1842 Ordnance Survey map as Castle Blagh, shown as a small circular enclosure measuring roughly 20 metres across. Today, visitors to this spot would find nothing but grass and perhaps a few grazing cattle; no stones, no mounds, no earthworks to suggest that anything of significance ever stood here.

The castle’s disappearance wasn’t sudden but gradual. When the historian Grove White investigated the site in the early 20th century, locals told him that some vestiges of ruined buildings had been visible within living memory, though even these remnants had vanished by the time of his visit between 1905 and 1925. What little we know suggests this was probably one of the Roche family’s castles, part of their network of fortifications across County Cork. The Roches, a Norman family who arrived in Ireland in the 12th century, built numerous castles throughout the region to control their extensive lands.

The site represents a common story in Irish archaeology; countless medieval structures that once dotted the landscape have been lost to time, agriculture, and stone robbing. Castle Blagh survives only as a name on old maps and in archaeological inventories, a reminder that even substantial stone buildings can disappear entirely, leaving behind only stories and the faintest traces in historical records. The Archaeological Inventory of County Cork notes the site’s location and its complete absence of physical remains, preserving at least the memory of what once stood in this now unremarkable patch of pasture.