Ballinacarriga Castle (''Béal na Carraige'' in Irish, meaning ''Mouth of the Rock'') is a 16th-century tower house located in the village of Ballinacarriga, about from the town of Dunmanway and from the village of

Ballineen The twin villages of Ballineen () and Enniskeane () in County Cork in Ireland are southwest of Cork City, on the R586 road. Ballineen and Enniskean lie on the River Bandon between Bandon and Dunmanway and the fertile Bandon valley. History Ba ...

. There is also a school nearby.

History

Ballinacarriga was built in the sixteenth century by the native Ó Muirthile family. Following the 1641 rebellion, the family's lands were taken from them.

Architecture

The castle features several defensive features such as

bartizans A bartizan (an alteration of ''bratticing''), also called a guerite, ''garita'', or ''échauguette'', or spelled bartisan, is an overhanging, wall-mounted turret projecting from the walls of late medieval and early-modern fortifications from the ...

, and indications that the castle once featured both a

machicolation A machicolation (french: mâchicoulis) is a floor opening between the supporting corbels of a battlement, through which stones or other material, such as boiling water, hot sand, quicklime or boiling cooking oil, could be dropped on attackers at t ...

and, unusually, a

portcullis A portcullis (from Old French ''porte coleice'', "sliding gate") is a heavy vertically-closing gate typically found in medieval fortifications, consisting of a latticed grille made of wood, metal, or a combination of the two, which slides down gr ...

. The castle features a sheela na gig on the eastern side, roughly at the halfway point. SheelaNaGigBallinacarrigaCastle

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