The site appears on the 1842 Ordnance Survey six-inch map as a dotted rectangle, the cartographer’s way of marking something that was already more memory than masonry. According to historian Ó Murchadha’s 1985 research, this castle was built in 1214 by Robert Carew, one of the Anglo-Norman adventurers who swept into Ireland following the initial invasion.

The Carews were part of that wave of Norman families who established themselves across Munster, building castles to secure their newly acquired territories. Dunnamark would have been strategically positioned to control access along this stretch of Bantry Bay, serving both as a defensive stronghold and a statement of Norman authority in what was then a contested landscape. The early thirteenth century was a period of intense castle building in Ireland, as the new arrivals sought to consolidate their grip on the lands they had seized from the Gaelic Irish.

Today, visitors to Dunnamark will find no romantic ruins or crumbling walls to photograph; the castle has been entirely reclaimed by time and nature. Its story survives only in historical documents and old maps, a reminder that not all of Ireland’s medieval heritage has endured in stone. The site remains archaeologically significant despite its invisible nature, recorded in the Archaeological Inventory of County Cork as a testament to the layers of history that lie beneath Ireland’s modern landscape.