Desmond Castle, Kinsale

On Cork Street, a short climb from the centre of Kinsale, stands a classic urban tower house of about 1500: a three-storey keep with storehouses behind. It was built by Maurice Bacach Fitzgerald, earl of Desmond, as the town's customs house, and over the following centuries it served many uses. It was an ordnance store during the Battle of Kinsale in 1601, and in the 17th and 18th centuries a prison holding French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and American captives, which earned it the local name the French Prison. During the Great Famine it was a workhouse; in the early 1900s the Gaelic League met here, and in the 1930s it housed an undertaker's business. More recently it held a museum of wine. The castle has been closed for conservation works since 2020, with no reopening date, but its tall stone front can be seen from the street.