Burnchurch Castle

PricingFreeFree for all visitors

Free entry for everyone

Entry

Free for everyone

Pricing details

Free for everyone; an open-air monument with no staff, tickets or booking. No membership card is needed.

ParkingParking not known

The Trust's page does not say how parking is charged.

Parking details

OPW names no car park or directions. A gravel apron beside the L1015 at the stile into the castle field is seen in a 2024 street photograph, and reviewers describe plenty of parking outside; it is not an official car park. No bus service is named.

Driving pin: the roadside stile into the castle field, 58 m east of OPW's own pin on the castle. The road bends here; take care stepping out of the car.

About

Burnchurch takes its name from its own destruction: the church St Dallán founded here in the sixth century was burned in 1316 by Robert the Bruce's Scots army, and the place has been Teampall Loiscthe, the burnt church, ever since. The Fitzgerald family, also called Baron, built this tower house in the 15th or 16th century and held it until the Cromwellian confiscation of 1653, when Richard Fitzgerald lost the estate to Colonel William Warden and was transplanted to Connacht. OPW counts six storeys, with straight stairs in the thickness of the walls, a secret chamber off the fourth floor, a vaulted living room with a massive fireplace, a murder hole over the north door and arrow slits at every level. Twenty metres north stands the round turret of the lost bawn wall. The castle is seen from outside only; reviewers suggest ten or fifteen minutes, with a look at the old church and graveyard across the road, where the orator Henry Flood is buried.

Open in daylightFrom OPW Heritage Ireland's published times

Open any reasonable time in daylight

Opening times may change at short notice.

An unguided open-air national monument in OPW's care with no staff and no facilities. OPW warns that care and caution should be kept throughout a visit to its unguided sites.

OPW's notice: for external viewing only; the castle and turret cannot be entered.

The field is reached over a four-step stepover stile, not suitable for wheelchairs; grass underfoot on farmland. An information plaque stands at the castle. No toilets. The ruined church and graveyard across the road, where Henry Flood is buried, are not an OPW site.

Photo: Burnchurch Castle's tower house rising above a stubble field, with the round bawn turret beside it. Simonak, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Burnchurch_Castle_and_tower.jpg. Licence: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0. Resized and cropped for display; derivatives retain the source licence.