Ballyhannon Castle

Ballyhannon Castle was built around 1490 by Hugh, and possibly Síoda, sons of Donnchadh MacNamara, in a period the antiquarian T. J. Westropp called the "Golden Age of castle-building in Thomond" for the high standard of masonry it produced. It was the home of the MacNamaras for many centuries, though it stood on lands belonging to the O'Briens. The Hannon name survives in the castle's title, but that family's history belongs to an earlier period — among the few surviving records is the death in 1266 of Maelisa O'Hannen, prior of Roscommon — and no reference connects them to the castle itself.

In 1560 Elizabeth I granted Ballyhannon, previously held by Donnell O'Brien, to Conor O'Brien, Earl of Thomond, "to hold in tail male, by service of one knight's fee". County castle lists of 1570 and 1574 record it as owned by Covea Riogh MacNamara, son of Mahon. A fireplace inscribed "H.T.E. 1576", among the earliest dated fireplaces recorded in the county, was noted in the castle by Westropp and Twigge in the 1890s but can no longer be located within it. In 1586 Elizabeth I pardoned Hugh, son of Covea MacNamara, for being in rebellion, on condition he provide sureties for his future conduct. By the 5th Earl of Thomond's rental of 1626, the castle and a quarter of land were let to Robert Hawksworth, likely one of the English Protestant settlers being placed on O'Brien lands in Thomond, for £4.

The settling of English Protestants on land taken from native Irish Catholics precipitated the 1641 rebellion, during which the MacNamaras of Ballyhannon took part in despoiling the newly settled tenants of the district. Mahone MacNamara of Ballyhannon was among the Irish landowners later stripped of his property for taking part; it was disposed to Pierce Creagh, a Protestant settler, and to Barnabas O'Brien, 6th Earl of Thomond. Many Irish castles were dismantled by Cromwellian forces to render them defenceless, but Ballyhannon appears to have escaped this fate — a sketch made in 1675 for the "Edenvale Survey" shows it still roofed and in good condition, enclosed by a bawn wall with a gate and loophole windows.

With the accession of the Catholic James II in 1685, the position of the native Irish improved for a time, and Sir Daniel O'Brien, Viscount Clare, listed Ballyhannon as a castle suitable for imprisoning Protestant settlers who were now themselves being dispossessed — "put into some strong castle that has a geate to be locked on the outside like Ballyhannon", as a letter of 1689 put it. Pierce Creagh, who had earlier received part of the forfeited MacNamara lands at Ballyhannon, was named among those to be held there. In 1690, amid renewed conflict, Thomas Hickman asked Sir Donough O'Brien to remove his belongings from the castle, expecting it soon to be garrisoned.

By 1837 the castle stood uninhabited — probably for the first time in 350 years — and by 1858 it was described as ivy-covered. In 1970 the American oil heiress Elizabeth Phillips, of the Phillips Petroleum family, and her husband Henry D. Irwin restored the building, reviving the older townland spelling as "Ballyhannan Castle". It is now rented out to tourists, and is registered in Irish government records as a National Monument and a listed, protected structure.