Ireland · Partial ruin
Carrickkildavnet Castle
Caisleán Ghráinne (Acaill)
Carrickkildavnet Castle is a four-storey late medieval Irish tower house on the southeast corner of Achill Island guarding Achill Sound. The stone tower stood within a surrounding bawn wall and retains features such as a vaulted first floor, mural chamber, machicolation and defensive loops.
Its prime
1530
Today
Partial ruin
As it stood in 1530
What Carrickkildavnet Castle looked like in its prime.
A tall, rectangular four-storey tower house of reddish-brown masonry standing directly on the grassy foreshore beside Achill Sound. The silhouette is a simple vertical block with narrow vertical slit windows and small defensive loops, a corbelled machicolation and crenellated parapet with buttress-like fortifications at the top. The first floor is stone-vaulted with a corner opening to the upper levels; a low bawn curtain wall encloses a grassy courtyard around the tower.
Its story
The story of Carrickkildavnet Castle.
Built by the Ó Máille, c. 1429
Carrickkildavnet Castle, also called Kildavnet Castle, was built around 1429 by the Ó Máille - the O'Malleys, kings of Umaill. They set it in the south-east corner of Achill Island, facing the Corraun Peninsula across the water. The position is a strategic one: it protects the mouth of Achill Sound and the passage that links Clew Bay with Blacksod Bay.
Gráinne Ní Mháille's Achill Stronghold
The tower later became a stronghold of Gráinne Ní Mháille - Grace O'Malley, born about 1530 and dead by about 1603 - the famous "pirate queen". Her other strongholds were Rockfleet Castle on Clew Bay and Clare Island.
A Tower Made Hard to Enter
The building is a tower house of four storeys, vaulted above the first floor. The only way up from that vault to the storeys above is a hole at its corner, an arrangement presumed to have been made for defence. The tower also carries a mural chamber, a machicolation, defensive loops and buttressing at the top, and the wall of its bawn survives in ruin around it. The castle stands in County Mayo and is protected as a National Monument.
Step inside
6 places to explore in 1530.
The record describes 6 distinct spots at Carrickkildavnet Castle, including 3 interiors: vaulted first-floor chamber, mural chamber in the thickness of the wall, upper living chamber and slit windows. Create your own photoreal reconstruction and explore every one, more scenes means more rooms, more angles, and more of the place to stand in.
Build Your Own Castle
Recreate Carrickkildavnet Castle with AI to explore it.
The artist rebuilds it as it stood in 1530, a photoreal reconstruction that belongs to you alone. Pay with coins, no subscription needed.
Recreate this castle →Defend this castle →Whose castle
Clans who held Carrickkildavnet Castle.
The families that held Carrickkildavnet Castle for a decade or more across its history, follow a name to its clan.
O'Malley
Later the stronghold of Gráinne Ní Mháille, Grace O'Malley.
