Carrigogunnell

The rock at Carrigogunnell is an outcrop of trap rock of volcanic origin above the low lands of County Limerick and the River Shannon, near the village of Clarina. It enters the record in 1209, when the Annals of Innisfallen name Carraic Ui gConaing as confirmed by King John to Donchad Cairbreach O'Brien, King of Thomond, an ally of the English king's Norman interests. Unsubstantiated stories tell of the place being built for or garrisoned by Templars. After 1209 no record of it survives for more than a century.

A branch of the O'Briens then seems to have crossed the Shannon, settled on the rock, and overspread the old Norman manor of Esclon and the country southward up the Maigue, their territory represented by the barony and name of Pubblebrian. That settlement is said to have been about 1336, though Tadhg na Glenore O'Brien, ancestor of the later Briens of Carrigogunnell, was King of Thomond only in 1426, and it seems doubtful that his descendants obtained the place or built the castle much before 1450. The keep's architectural indicators date it to the 14th or 15th century.

Westropp, going over what was left in 1908, thought the plan showed little appreciation of defensive science. The main southern gateway lacked side towers, its walls stood under five feet thick, and the approach to it was a shallow slope; there were no towers at the junctions of the walls, and apart from that gate the sole way out was a sally port on the west side, opening onto the crags. He read the whole as suited only to be a fortified residence, not fitted for the defence of an assault or a siege.

The castle first appears in history in 1536, when Leonard Grey, 1st Viscount Grane, the Lord Deputy, marched on "the very strong castle called Carekogunyel, and in English Candell Rock", which "stands on a high rock and ... is the key of all the county". Its owner, Mahon O'Byrne, surrendered it on condition that the Government should hold it themselves. Grey was about to hand it instead to another of the name, ignoring his promise, when it was put back into the hands of Mahon's warder by a plot laid at the door of Edmond Sexton and his wife by their enemies, though Grey acquitted them.

The castle was then attacked. One of its towers was taken on the night of 22 August, the keep surrendered the following morning, and Edmond Cahill, the warder, with all of the garrison, was carried to Limerick, tried and hanged. Grey, an active participant in the Tudor conquest of Ireland, was implicated in several massacres there, and the most notorious of them took place at Carrigogunnell in 1536, when the castle still lay in Thomond. His own account recorded women and children among those he had killed, and it is his willingness to set that down in a report to London, as a piece of service fit to be recorded, that pinpoints his significance in the military history of sixteenth-century Ireland.

The Crown claimed the castle, apparently on the unfounded statement that the O'Briens held it from "Lord Clerre", probably Richard de Clare, whose lands had reverted to the Crown. Donough was established in it, abused his powers and was deprived for extortion. Mahon used to claim a penny on every barrel of wine and twopence on every other barrel brought to Limerick. Donough's son, Brian Duff, was confirmed in the castle and in nearly all of what is now Pubblebrian.

Lenihan's history of Limerick counts the O'Connell family among the castle's occupants, and has them surrendering it to the Fitzgeralds. The name has been derived from theirs, as Carrig-O-Gloinneal, the rock of the O'Connells, though since at least the late medieval period it has been read as the rock of the candle, after the hag Grana, said to have lived on the outcrop before the castle was built and to light an enchanted candle there each night.

The castle was not used in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms between 1640 and 1651. Its last owner, Donough Brien, prudently sold it to Michael Boyle, afterwards Archbishop of Dublin, and a Captain Wilson took it over and built a stable there; the holding then amounted to a castle, a bawn, a few thatched huts and a salmon fishery.

During the second siege of Limerick in the Williamite War the rock was held by a force of 150 men for King James II. In August 1691 the Dutch general Godert de Ginckell sent Lieutenant-General Scravemore against it with a strong party and four guns. The garrison surrendered and were marched to Clonmel as prisoners of war. In September 1691 de Ginckell ordered Carrigogunnell slighted, and it was blown up.