Ballymote Castle stands on the southern edge of the market town of Ballymote in County Sligo, thirty miles south-east of the Moy estuary. It is the largest and most architecturally ambitious castle anywhere within the wider Ó Dubhda sphere of influence — and, importantly, one the Ó Dubhda never owned. Built around 1300 by Richard Óg de Burgh, the “Red Earl” of Ulster, the castle is an almost-square Anglo-Norman enclosure with D-shaped towers on its east and west walls and a twin-towered gatehouse on the north; the curtain walls survive to a thickness of roughly three metres. The place-name records its origin: Baile an Mhóta, “town of the moat,” from the earthen moat that preceded the stone fortress on this site.
The castle rarely stayed in one family’s hands for long. De Burgh control broke in 1317, when the Four Masters record the castle demolished in the upheavals of the Bruce wars. Later accounts credit its capture to the O’Connors, and through the mid-1300s the annals show it as an O’Connor fortress in their wars with the MacDermots (Mac Diarmada) of Moylurg. By 1381 it had passed to a MacDermot cadet branch, the MacDonaghs of Corann, who that year broke down the castle of Ballylahan and carried its gate home to Ballymote; under them “Mac Donough of Ballymote” becomes a standing phrase in the Annals of the Four Masters. About 1585 the castle passed into Crown hands ‐ the Four Masters reckon it thirteen years in the Queen’s possession before 1598 ‐ and by 1593 they name Sir George Bingham, a kinsman of the Governor of Connacht Sir Richard Bingham, as “of Ballymote”.
In the summer of 1598 the MacDonaghs recovered the castle. Within months, at the height of the Nine Years’ War, the Four Masters record a remarkable bidding contest between the Crown and the Gaelic confederacy:
“The Governor, Sir Conyers Clifford, and O’Donnell (Hugh Roe) were auctioning the castle against each other, in offering to purchase it from the Clann-Donough. The close of the bargain was, that the Clann-Donough gave up the castle to O’Donnell, for a purchase and contract, in the middle month of the autumn of this year. Four hundred pounds in money and three hundred cows was the price which O’Donnell gave the Clann Donough for the castle.”
— Annals of the Four Masters, M1598.28
Red Hugh O’Donnell resided at Ballymote through the winter that followed the great Gaelic victory at the Yellow Ford (14 August 1598), leaving around the feast of St Bridget (1 February) 1599. In late 1601 it was from Ballymote that he marched south on the long road that ended at the defeat of Kinsale.
After the flight of the Gaelic lords, the Crown granted Ballymote to the Taaffes of Corran, who in 1628 were raised to the peerage as Viscounts Taaffe of Corran. Theobald Taaffe, second Viscount and a Confederate general, held the castle through the wars of the 1640s. The place appears intermittently in the records of the period but never again carried the strategic weight it had held under O’Donnell.
The Ó Dubhda connection to the castle is slender but real: a single documented moment at the end. When the Cromwellian reduction of Connacht reached its conclusion in 1652 — by which time Henry Ireton was already dead (November 1651) — the castle was given up to Sir Charles Coote, Lord President of Connacht. The garrison’s commander, Major-General Luke Taaffe, concluded the articles of surrender on 24 June 1652, and by the clan’s own record, among the Irish officers who signed them was Lieutenant-Colonel Tadhg Riabhach Ó Dubhda. Ballymote was one of the last places in Ireland to surrender at the end of the Cromwellian wars, and Tadhg Riabhach’s signature is the clan’s one documented moment in the castle’s long story.
The castle had one more military chapter. During the Williamite War, Counsellor Terence MacDonagh seized Ballymote for King James II at the head of a few men; when he left on an expedition to Ulster, one of the O’Connors held the castle in his place. In 1691, as Arthur Forbes, 1st Earl of Granard, marched on Sligo, a detachment with several pieces of artillery was sent against Ballymote, and O’Connor ‐ the castle lying in a hollow, at the mercy of cannon on the surrounding hills ‐ surrendered it on terms. From that time the castle was allowed to fall into ruin.
What survives is a near-square enclosure ‐ Lewis in 1837 gave the area within the walls as 150 feet square ‐ with four corner towers and D-shaped towers projecting along the east and west walls. The entrance is a twin-towered gatehouse in the middle of the north wall, retaining its portcullis slot and drainage spouts. Walls three metres thick, a moat where no stone could easily be laid without one, a north gatehouse whose flanking towers rose three storeys — the castle’s ambition is still legible. It is the most substantial Anglo-Norman castle within the wider Ó Dubhda sphere, and its very existence is a reminder that this part of Sligo was contested ground, with English, MacDonagh, O’Connor Sligo, O’Donnell and Ó Dubhda interests all bearing on it at different times.
Ballymote’s cultural weight outstripped its military career. The Book of Ballymote (Leabhar Bhaile an Mhóta) was compiled here, at least in part, around 1391 — a Gaelic manuscript miscellany containing the Lebor Gabála (Book of Invasions), the Dinnshenchas, a key treatise on Ogham script, and a Middle Irish version of the Destruction of Troy. It is now held in the Royal Irish Academy (MS 23 P 12) and remains one of the most important surviving compendiums of medieval Irish learning.
Ballymote Castle is a National Monument in the care of the Office of Public Works. The site is free to access and unguided. Visitors should exercise caution around the ruined walls and follow any OPW signage on site. A local Heritage Trail interpretive panel stands at the curtain wall.
Ballymote Castle — southern end of Ballymote town, Co. Sligo
Photographs of Ballymote Castle submitted by clan members.
Tales, research and dispatches from the Ó Dubhda journal.
The popular ’20 castles’ figure keeps growing as new field reports, old maps, and survey records turn up Ó Dubhda sites no one had counted. Here’s where the tally stands.
On a September Sunday in 2000, in an Iron-Age ring-fort above Lackan Bay called Cathair Mór, Conor MacHale held the White Wand over Thomas J Dowds’ head, and the assembled clan shouted ‘Ó Dubhda! Ó Dubhda! Ó Dubhda!’ across the same ground where the ceremony had last been performed in 1595. At a glanceDates: 1 – 3 September 2000 · Base: Atlantic Hotel, EnniscroneAttendance: The largest rally yet — members from every inhabited continentNotable moment: First Brehon inauguration of an Ó Dubhda Taoiseach in 400 years. The Millennium Rally Hotels and guesthouses in Enniscrone were full. Ó Dubhdas had come from Australia, the United States, Europe and Africa to mark a new century and a new chapter. The Atlantic Hotel reception brought together the regulars — Ed from Chicago, Seán from Kerry — and introduced new names, including seven-month-old Aimee Louise Stanton from Dubai. Friday’s session centred on Dr Peadar O’Dowd’s illustrated talk on the Uí Dubhda’s role in North Connacht, and an evening ceilidh that ran long. Saturday: The Castles & Ballymote The Saturday historical tour worked through the ancestral sites: Ardnaree Friary, Skreen, Castleconnor and Roslee Castle, Easkey. The group then drove south to Ballymote Castle — where the last Taoiseach, Tadhg Buí, had led his troops to join Red Hugh O’Donnell before the march to Kinsale in 1601. With permission from the caretakers, the Ó Dubhda standard was raised alongside O’Donnell’s at the gate of the castle. That small gesture — four centuries late — set the tone for the next day. The Inauguration at Cahirmore On Sunday the clan climbed to Cahirmore, the hilltop ring-fort that had once been held by the O’Caomháin family, hereditary marshals to the Ó Dubhda. Following the rite recorded by John O’Donovan and, earlier, in the Great Book of Lecan, the Chieftain-elect climbed to the highest point of the hill and turned round three times. Ollamh Conor MacHale held the White Wand over his head, confirming his title. Richard F Dowd from New Jersey was inaugurated as Tánaiste. The assembly, arranged in rings around the fort, called out Ó Dubhda! Ó Dubhda! Ó Dubhda! three times as the wind rose from the bay. Where in earlier centuries the new Taoiseach would have received tribute from his people, in 2000 a collection was taken up to be donated to a local charity. The banquet followed at Belleek Castle. Voices & Visitors The Taoiseach remarked afterwards that it had taken four hundred years to hold this ceremony again. It is a mark of how well the clan had grown that, within a single weekend in 2000, it was able to be done at all. Further Reading Thomas J Dowds, The Ó Dubhda Gatherings: A History (forthcoming) — chapter 6 Conor Mac Hale, The Ó Dubhda Family History (1990) — the scholarly basis for the ceremony John O’Donovan, The Genealogies, Tribes and Customs of Hy-Fiachrach (1844) — the inauguration rite described odubhdaclan.com archive entry ← Previous Rally The 1998 Bonniconlon Commemoration Next Rally → The 2003 Rally — Richard F Dowd Inaugurated
These pages are researched and written by volunteers of the Ó Dubhda Clan. Our history is vast, and our understanding of it grows with every correction, addition, and story shared by clan members and researchers.
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