Croom Castle

Croom sits on a strategic bend in the River Maigue, which gives the place its name: Cromadh, the bend in the river. Until the Norman invasion of Ireland the surrounding territory was the domain of the ancient Uí Cairpre Áebda, or Cairbre Eva, whose leading family were the O'Donovans. The Uí Chairpre belonged to the wider kingdom of the Uí Fidgenti, by then a remnant caught between the rival kingdoms of Desmond to the south and Thomond to the north.

A manuscript of the 1130s, the Caithréim Chellacháin Chaisil, names an O'Donovan ancestor, Uaithne mac Cathail of about 960, in connection with Cromadgh, the spelling of Croom in use in the mid-12th century. In 1151 Ruaidhri, son of Toirdhealbhach Ua Conchobhair, made a great predatory excursion into Thomond, carried away many cows and burned Cromadh. The Uí Fidgenti were pressured by Domnall Mór Ua Briain in 1178, but some O'Donovans remained in the area.

Samuel Lewis, in his Topographical Description of Ireland of 1837, credits one Dermot O'Donovan with the first known fortress at Croom, put up during the reign of John of England or perhaps shortly before, to secure country the family had recently taken from the MacEnirys, their Uí Fidgheinte kinsmen. The tower castle is believed to have been built in the early 13th century, following earlier attacks on the town.

Another attribution has not held. O'Donovan oral tradition in Carbery traces that branch from Crom Ua Donnabáin, who died in 1254 and is noted in the annals as Ancrom, the Bent, and credits him with building the Castle of Croom; the link rests on the similarity of the names and has been discredited repeatedly. An account of about 1690 names no individual builder, recording only that the O'Donovans, a family of royal extraction amongst the Irish, came from Coshma in the County of Limerick and built there the famous Castle of Crome.

The castle afterwards fell to the Earl of Kildare and became one of the principal residences of the Kildare branch of the FitzGerald dynasty. From this fortress came their ancient war cry and motto, Crom a Boo, or Crom Abú, Croom forever, still used on the Kildare scutcheon.

One branch of the O'Donovans, a remnant of the Uí Fidgheinte, has lived at Croom almost continuously for more than eight centuries, and has held its present farm for more than four, though the family has not occupied the tower castle since the Earls of Kildare established their residence there. The castle itself is now little more than a large ruin. Two walls of the tower still stand, both fallen to about half their original height, while the other two have collapsed into a very large pile of rock and brick.