Bunratty Castle

The Annals of the Four Masters record a Norse trading camp at the mouth of the Ratty destroyed by Brian Boru in 977, placed by local tradition on a rise south-west of the castle, though no remains have been found and its existence is unproven. Around 1250 Henry III granted the cantred of Tradraighe to Robert de Muscegros, who in 1251 felled some 200 trees in the king's wood at Cratloe, possibly for the motte-and-bailey that would have been the first castle here, and in 1253 won the right to hold markets and an annual fair.

In 1276 the lands went to Thomas de Clare, a descendant of Strongbow, who built the first stone castle on or near the present site: a single large tower with lime-white walls, occupied from about 1278. Bunratty had about a thousand inhabitants by the late 13th century. The O'Briens and their allies attacked it repeatedly, and in 1284, with de Clare away in England, they took and destroyed it. He rebuilt in 1287 and threw a fosse 140 yards long around the site. It held until 1318, the year Richard de Clare was killed at Dysert O'Dea during the Bruce wars in Ireland; on the news, Lady de Clare burned castle and town and fled to Limerick. The family never returned, and the stones probably went into other local building, for no trace of that castle remains.

Limerick was an important port for the English crown in the 14th century, and guarding the Shannon estuary against Irish attack meant reoccupying Bunratty. In 1353 Sir Thomas de Rokeby led an army against the MacNamaras and MacCarthys, and a third castle was raised. It was hardly finished before the Irish took it: in 1355 Edward III released Thomas Fitzjohn Fitzmaurice from prison in Limerick, where he had been held on the charge of letting the castle fall to Murtough O'Brien while serving as its governor.

The fourth castle, the tower house that still stands, was begun around 1450, its builder possibly Maccon Sioda MacNamara, chieftain of Clann Cuilein; he died before it was finished and the work was completed under his son Sean Finn, who died in 1467. Around 1500 it passed to the O'Briens, the most powerful clan in Munster and later Earls of Thomond, who enlarged the site and in time made it their chief seat in place of Ennis.

By 1558 it was reckoned one of the principal strongholds of Thomond, and in that year Thomas Radclyffe, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, took it from Donal O'Brien of Duagh, last King of Thomond, and gave it to Donal's nephew Connor. Connor's son Donogh may have been the one who shifted the family seat from Clonroad at Ennis, and he made improvements including a new lead roof.

In the Confederate wars set off by the rebellion of 1641, Barnabas O'Brien would commit to no side, playing royalists, rebels and roundheads off against one another, and in 1646 he let Lord Forbes and the forces of the English Long Parliament occupy Bunratty, then left for England to join King Charles. Whoever held the castle could blockade the Shannon and maritime access to Confederate-held Limerick, and its defence lay with Rear-Admiral Penn, father of William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania. After a long siege the Confederates took it; Penn surrendered, and was allowed to sail away to Kinsale. Barnabas died in 1657 having apparently leased the castle out, and it remained O'Brien property, still the principal seat of the Earls of Thomond in the 1680s.

In 1712 Henry, 8th and last Earl of Thomond, sold Bunratty and 472 acres to Thomas Amory for £225 and an annual rent of £120; Amory sold it on to Thomas Studdert, who moved in about 1720. The Studderts built the more comfortable Bunratty House beside it in 1804 and left the castle to fall into disrepair. It served for a time in the mid-19th century as a barracks for the Royal Irish Constabulary, was taken up again in 1894 as the seat of Captain Richard Studdert, and lost the roof of its Great Hall late in that century.

In 1956 the 7th Viscount Gort bought the castle and, with assistance from the Office of Public Works, reroofed it and saved it from ruin. It opened to the public in 1960, furnished with tapestries and works of art of about the 1600s. Ownership passed to Clare County Council in 2023.