Termonfeckin Tower House

On one of the highest points of Termonfeckin village, where the ground falls sharply to the shore of the Irish Sea, stands a three-storey tower house with a parapet and look-out turret, in a village that grew around St Fechin's monastery of 665. Its date is uncertain: OPW suggests the Norman period, the reign of Henry VIII, or one of Henry VI's ten-pound castles of the 1430s. Damaged in the 1641 rebellion and repaired by Captain James Brabazon, it was home to mendicants by 1834. Inside are a barrel-vaulted ground floor, rooms with a fireplace and garderobes lit by small carved granite windows, and, its most interesting feature, a corbelled stone roof to the top storey that recalls the passage tomb at Newgrange. The gate is kept locked and the key is borrowed from a neighbouring house, which reviewers, children especially, count as half the fun; a narrow spiral stair leads to the battlements and views over the sea.