Yet this farmyard sits atop centuries of turbulent Irish history; it marks the site where Tullamore Castle once commanded sweeping views across the landscape to Liscannor Bay. Though the castle was demolished before 1839, leaving no visible remains, historical maps from 1840 and 1916 still mark this spot as the castle’s location, showing it within a small circular enclosure roughly 26 metres across.

During the latter half of the 16th century, Tullamore Castle served as a stronghold for the O’Brien sept, one of the most powerful Gaelic families in the region. Sir Donal O’Brien of Dough held the castle in 1574, and by the early 1600s it had passed to Aney O’Brien. When she died around 1611, her son Turlough inherited the property, but his fortunes took a dark turn during the 1641 Rebellion. Implicated in the uprising, Turlough lost his lands to Lord Ikerrin, and when he died in 1652, his widow Una petitioned the Court of Claims on behalf of herself and her daughter in an attempt to reclaim their home.

The castle appears on the Down Survey map from 1655-1658, suggesting it still stood at that time, though historians believe it was likely demolished before 1700. By 1839, when antiquarian Curry visited the site, he found only ‘the site of an old castle’, and it had vanished from the Grandy Jury map of Clare by 1878. Today, visitors to this quiet farmyard would find it difficult to imagine that this was once home to one of Clare’s tower houses, a symbol of power and resistance that witnessed some of the most dramatic chapters in Irish history.