Carrick Castle, Carrick, Co. Kildare

Just 40 metres to the southeast, a medieval church and graveyard keep silent watch over these weathered remains. What survives today is believed to be a late 13th or 14th century hall-house with a later tower addition, though time and stone robbing have left only fragments of the original structure standing.

The hall-house remains consist of conjoined portions of the northeast and southeast walls, built from randomly coursed, rounded granite blocks set on a visible plinth. Originally three storeys tall, with the upper floor likely added later, the building was oriented on a northwest-southeast axis. A grassed-over platform of collapsed rubble extends northwest from the surviving walls, possibly concealing the original foundation courses beneath. The hall-house featured a first-floor entrance through a doorway in the northeast wall, complete with a fine round-headed rear arch that still survives despite later alterations that reduced its height and width. The ground floor was lit by narrow loops, including a double-splayed example that looked directly into the adjoining tower.

The rectangular tower, a later addition abutting the southeast of the hall-house, rises four storeys high and shows more sophisticated construction with regularly coursed granite blocks and a substantial base batter on three sides. Inside, evidence of domestic life remains: robbed-out fireplaces with external chimney corbels, multiple window openings including a fine ogee-headed example on the third floor, and walls pockmarked where stone was later robbed to create pigeon nesting boxes. The second floor once supported a vault, its scar-line still visible, whilst near the top of the northeast wall, traces of a recess suggest the tower may have provided access to a wall-walk atop the earlier hall-house. Intriguingly, an 'evil eye stone', possibly a Sheela-na-gig, was reportedly removed from the castle to the Murray Collection and later transferred to Cambridge, adding another layer of mystery to this atmospheric ruin.