Dovecote, Carrigafoyle, Co. Kerry

A square turret measuring sixteen metres by four metres, attached to the landward side of a wall two metres thick, is thought to have served not as a military strongpoint but as a dovecote, a purpose-built housing for doves or pigeons kept as a domestic food source. It is an oddly domestic detail lodged inside the fabric of what is otherwise a serious piece of late medieval fortification on the Shannon Estuary in north Kerry.

The castle, whose Irish name Carraig an Phoill refers to the rock of the hole or channel, was built in the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century by Connor Liath O'Connor Kerry, whose father John O'Connor Kerry was responsible for founding Lislaughtin Abbey nearby. The original structure occupied an island site and was defended by two concentric curtain walls, the bawn being the walled enclosure typical of Irish tower-house castles of this period. The inner bawn, now entirely gone, had rounded turrets, while the outer wall enclosed three sides of the complex on the north, south, and west, with square towers at its corners. The space between the two enclosures functioned as a boat dock, suggesting the castle was designed as much for control of river traffic as for land-based defence. Of the outer wall, the landward section survives, stretching twenty-one metres before terminating in the square turret now associated with the dovecote.