Carrigaphooca Castle, Tower castle near Macroom, Ireland

Carrigaphooca Castle is a five-storey rectangular tower house of sandstone and limestone, built on a steep, jagged roche moutonnée above the River Sullane. Its ground floor has three deeply recessed windows and a straight mural stair of 11 steps, which becomes a spiral of 54 steps in all. Two corner bartizans survive on opposite wall tops, and the top-floor windows frame the valley, the Killarney Paps and Mullaghanish.

Built in the early 15th century as a defensive tower, Carrigaphooca is attributed in some sources to Dermot Mór MacCarthy of Drishane Castle, around the time his brother Cormac Laidir was rebuilding Blarney Castle. Its position on the route between Macroom and County Kerry made it strategic in the MacCarthys' internecine warfare. In 1602 Donal Cam O'Sullivan Beare took it after a siege, burning the north door.

The name comes from Irish words meaning 'castle on the rock of the fairy', reflecting folklore about supernatural beings connected to this place. These stories remain part of how local people understand and speak about the location.

The castle stands about 6 kilometers west of Macroom but remains inaccessible to visitors as it sits on private property. You can view it from a distance, but access to the site itself is not permitted.

The fortress features a stone staircase that begins straight at ground level, then transforms into a spiral as it rises toward the fourth floor. This unusual construction shows how builders solved space and circulation challenges within the narrow tower.