Belvelly Castle

Belvelly Castle is a tower house of the fourteenth or fifteenth century, standing beside the small village of Belvelly in County Cork and looking across the only road bridge that links Fota Island to Great Island, on which Cobh stands. It was built by and for the Anglo-Norman Hodnett family, and taken from them in the fourteenth century by the De la Roch (Roche) and De Barra (Barry) families; the Hodnetts afterwards leased their own lands back.

Some accounts place Walter Raleigh at the castle in the sixteenth century, before the Barrys reoccupied it, and have Roger Boyle, 1st Earl of Orrery, garrisoning troops there during the Irish Confederate Wars of the mid-seventeenth century.

By the nineteenth century the tower had fallen into ruin. During the First World War it saw a rise in visitors, when local coachmen brought sailors whose ships had docked at nearby Queenstown — now Cobh — out to Belvelly, reputedly under the impression that they were being taken to Blarney Castle and its Blarney Stone. During the Emergency of 1939 to 1945 the castle was occupied and somewhat modified by the Irish Army.

The castle was sold in the early twenty-first century, and planning permission was granted in early 2016 for its restoration as a private dwelling. The work was finished in late 2018, with artworks set on the roof of the tower house. Its owners have been among the sponsors of the local football club, Cobh Ramblers.