Dromore Castle

The surviving monument is a four-storey, stone-built tower house set on a peninsula at the northern end of Dromore Lake, about 1.8 kilometres east of Ruan, with the portal tomb known as Moyree-Commons close by. The building displays the masonry techniques of its time, with a stone vaulted ceiling over the ground floor that carries the weight of the upper levels.

Access to the upper floors is via a wide circular stair that stands to the right of the principal entrance; to the left of that entrance a small guardroom opens off the ground floor passage. Between the first and second floors the stair contains a circular shot hole cut into the stairway wall, an adaptation for close-range defence. On the first floor the left-hand chamber retains a stone fireplace set into the wall, an original feature formed from local stone.

Along the roofline there remains a pathway around the gables for movement and defence, and a tall rectangular chimney rises above the roofscape, its top finished with a pair of lozenge-shaped flues. Corbels projecting from the upper walls show where a corner watch-turret once sat. An inscription carved above the entrance attributes building work to Teige, son of Connor, third Earl of Thomond, and to his wife Slany Brien, though the year recorded there is illegible. The tower survives as a ruinous but clearly legible example of a 16th–17th century Irish tower house, with its vaulted ground floor, stair, fireplace, defensive shot hole, and roof features all visible in situ.