Moygara Castle

Moygara Castle, at Moygara, Gorteen in County Sligo, was constructed by the O’Gara family and first appears in documentary sources in 1285. The site stands beside Loch Gara, earlier called Loch Technet and later Loch Ui Ghadra, names that reflect the local Ui Ghadra/O’Gara family. The O’Gara established three defensive strongholds around the lake and Moygara was the earliest, set on the northwest shore near the settlement of Mullairo. The castle occupies ground where an earlier defended enclosure, perhaps an Irish ringfort, once lay.

In the later Middle Ages the building was altered and enlarged: in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the original rectangular range was expanded and corner towers were added. The site suffered attacks in the sixteenth century—an assault by O’Donnell forces in 1538 and a destructive attack by Scottish mercenaries in 1581 that left the castle burned—and it was affected by the upheavals of the 1640s and by subsequent Cromwellian operations in Ireland, during which it sustained further damage. A drawing of 1878 recorded a carved relief on the tower showing two interlaced figures, and archaeological excavation in 2013 uncovered ditches and traces of smelting furnaces. Local tradition preserves tales such as a plane tree said to have been used by an O’Gara chief to hang attackers and a story that the castle once had golden gates cast into Loch Gara to prevent their capture. The castle survives as a ruin on private land and can be visited with the landowner’s permission.